Editor’s note: This is one of a continuing online series of profiles of the more than 12,000 Hoosiers who have died from COVID-19. The stories are from 12 Indiana newspapers, including The Republic, who collaborated to create the collection to highlight the tremendous loss that the pandemic has created. The series appears daily at therepublic.com.
Name: Jeanette “Jan” Diehl
City/Town: Bluffton
Age: 89
Died: Nov. 23
Jan Diehl spent 22 years of retirement in sunny Florida with her husband Don Diehl. They were married for 54 years.
She loved spending time on the beach and collecting shells.
Even though the couple was from Chicago, they decided to enter the next phase of retirement at Christian Care Retirement Community in Bluffton, where their daughter is the administrator.
When her husband became sick in early November, both of them were tested for COVID-19 and tested negative. But still, Don Diehl was sick. His oxygen level couldn’t stay elevated, and he died Nov. 5.
The next day, Jan Diehl tested positive for COVID-19. She was sick but was eventually moved out of the COVID ward. Then she just seemed to lose her appetite completely, her daughter said.
Jan Diehl had dementia, so the death of her husband had to be explained multiple times on multiple days. The moves from her home she shared with her husband to the COVID ward and then to her new home strained her due to her condition.
Then her oxygen levels began to drop, similarly to how her husband’s had.
Jan Diehl died 18 days after her husband.
— Contributed by the Bluffton News-Banner
