When Kathy and Jim celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this year, they found themselves reflecting on where it all began: Surrey Memorial Hospital.
In January 1975, Kathy had just turned 16 and was admitted to the hospital after becoming seriously ill.
With no room available elsewhere, she was placed on the geriatric ward, where Jim, 17, was also a patient.
Feeling down during her hospital stay, Kathy received some unexpected advice from a nurse named Delia.
“This lovely nurse came in and said, ‘Go check out the cute guy in the next room,’” Kathy recalls. Delia told Kathy to watch for Jim as he walked the halls with a friend. When she spotted him heading toward the elevator, Kathy made sure she was nearby.
“I was there on purpose,” she says with a laugh. “We started talking about the weather. That’s kind of how I picked him up.”
That evening, they watched Blue Hawaii together in the hospital visitors’ lounge.
“It was such a terrible movie,” Kathy says. “We stuck it out anyway.”
Jim was discharged the next morning, but he returned that afternoon to visit Kathy. Then he came back the next day, and the next. For two weeks, while Kathy remained in hospital, Jim visited every day.
“He said he’d be back, but you never really know if someone will,” Kathy says. “But he really did. He just kept coming back.”
When Kathy was discharged, Jim picked her up from the hospital. Before taking her home, he stopped at People’s Jewellers and surprised her with a ruby ring.
“I was very surprised,” Kathy says. “I thought, ‘Okay, this is pretty serious.’”
More than 50 years later, she still wears that same ring.
The couple married in 1976, raised two sons and recently celebrated their golden anniversary with a trip to Portugal.
As they marked the milestone, Kathy couldn’t stop thinking about Delia. She had tried to find the nurse years earlier without success and recently shared their story with Fraser Health in the hope of reconnecting with the person who unknowingly changed their lives.
When asked what she would say if she ever saw Delia again, Kathy teared up.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
