In Puerto Rico, a musician has been serenading his dying wife in a makeshift medical shelter at a sports stadium, warming the hearts of those nearby, the Miami Herald reported.
Santos Candelaria, 71, has been playing for his wife, Evelyn Rivera Vargas, whose age was not given, since arriving at the stadium in Manati, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 22, noted the Herald. Candelaria plays traditional songs for his wife, who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and sometimes others at the shelter join in the singing, the newspaper said.
"I sleep close to her," Candelaria told the Herald. "We've been doing that for the last 45 years."
The shelter was a location of last resort for the couple, who were hunkered down at a nearby hospice when Hurricane Maria hit on Sept. 20 as a Category 4 hurricane with winds up to 157 miles per hour, The Atlantic noted.
The hurricane knocked out the power grid to the island leaving the entire region without power, while most cellphone towers were destroyed in its wake as well, the magazine said. Some towns saw 80 to 90 percent of their structures destroyed, The Atlantic said.
The generator went out at the hospice Candelaria and his wife were in and the generator to a nearby shelter they went to shortly ran out of diesel, the Miami Herald wrote. That sent the couple scrambling to find a hospital or shelter with a reliable enough generator where Vargas's
Ventilator could operate, the newspaper stated.
"We've been traveling a lot in ambulances," Candelaria told the Miami Herald. "She was a beautiful, wonderful woman, but the age and the sickness really can change a person. It's not easy to see a person that you've known for so many years deteriorate by the minute."
Candelaria was still able to pick up his guitar, though, and play for his wife, gathering a small crowd when he plays, the newspaper said. He said he even wrote one song for the doctors and nurses who worked with his wife and other patients at the shelter.
"Garcias," Candelaria sang, according to the Herald. "Today I want to thank all of these women and men that God has sent here to help Puerto Rico in this devastation."
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