A couple who'd been married for 50 years have died from Covid within 12 hours of one another.
May Cropley, 71, refused further treatment after she watched husband John, 73, lose his battle against the virus.
Both had received two vaccines but had been shielding for 18 months due to serious underlying health conditions.
The couple, from Auchtermuchty, Fife, in Scotland, ran a business together and were devoted Christians who served in ministry together and had worked as missionaries all over the world.
Tragically they caught Covid together, and suffered together in their final days in a shared a hospital room at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee.
When John died in front of May she made the heartbreaking decision to refuse her own treatment.
May sang Amazing Grace before she passed away too - just 12 hours after her husband died.
Last week they were laid to rest together.
The couple both had serious underlying health conditions.
May was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2009 and had an autoimmune condition called Good's syndrome, which left her more vulnerable to illness.
May once wrote: "This may not have been what I would have chosen for my life but wherever the will of God leads me, the grace of God will keep me."
John had a form of vasculitis affecting his lungs.
May's cousin, Janet McKay, said: "They both had these underlying health conditions but they remained so faithful.
"They never doubted and just kept going.
"John was still preaching until a few weeks ago."
On his website, Fife Pulpit by the Sea, recordings of John's sermons can be heard.
The last sermon was posted in July as the couple's health problems worsened.
After shielding for more than a year, May her cousins' 60th birthdays.
"They don't know how they caught it, but from getting it to becoming really ill it was only a matter of days," Janet said.
"I had just seen May, and we had talked on the phone. I knew they were feeling ill with it, but I was shocked to get the message to say they had gone into hospital.
"May was fine when I had spoken to her last but then in the early hours of Tuesday, July 13, I got a text that said they had been taken to Ninewells."
The couple were placed in a room together and shortly afterward, shocked friends and family were told John's condition had worsened and he had died.
Janet said: "As I understand it, May refused the treatment. They called for the hospital chaplain, who knew them both, and as they sang Amazing Grace, she slipped away.
"I really can't believe it. Covid took John and 12 hours later she went with him."
John and May, who celebrated their golden wedding earlier this year, were laid to rest in Upper Largo Cemetery in a plot beside May's older brother, Gordon.
Janet added: "I will miss them both terribly. May was older than me and so I've known them both my whole life. John was so funny. He had a wicked sense of humour. And May was so kind."
May had moved to Portsmouth as a teenager, where her dad served as a chaplain in the Royal Navy.
May met her future husband - who had joined the Navy at 15 as a telegraphist - when he was invited to live with her family due to her dad's work.
Janet said: "Uncle Tommy was well known for always bringing back people to the house who needed help. John was one of them. A lost soul at the time."
John, who was originally from Lincolnshire, wrote of the time before het met his future wife: "I sailed around the world and spent most of my time drunk and doing the things sailors do. However, throughout this I had a deep sense of wrong - a sense of judgment."
One night in HMS Mercury's Signal School, a man spoke to him about God.
Little did he know that man would become his future father-in-law and that a life in ministry beckoned for him too.
John and May were married in the Spring of 1971.
On her website, May wrote: "I met John and we fell in love.
"I was so thrilled that I had met someone who loved the Lord as much as I did.
"We arranged our wedding for May 1971 but, at the end of March that year, our GP told us that my mum would not make it to then. So after a call to my pastor and lots of phone calls to family and friends, we arranged our wedding on 3rd of April 1971. She lasted three weeks after that."
Dealing with health issues would repeatedly be a feature of the Cropleys' lives.
But in their earlier years, the pair worked as missionaries, and John was ordained as a pastor.
In later years they worked at a church in Sunderland, before returning home to work for the Scottish Christian Alliance.
John was also chaplain for Rosyth naval base for a time before returning to Fife to buy a house in Auchtermuchty and working to help homeless people in Glenrothes.
May managed the Gilven House Project, which is now under the management of Fife Council, and John was assistant director at the Alliance.
"I had the pleasure of working with May when she was the manager for the supported accommodation for young homeless women for many years," said Fife Council head of housing services John Mills said.
"She was committed and passionate in her support for the young residents and to ensure that they could always move on to their own tenancy and to take advantage of education and training opportunities.
"She, with John's strong support, went the extra mile to make a big difference to young people using Gilven House."
