The day after his wife died, Steven Tice knew he couldn't be alone in the house they had shared. So the Michigan man got in his pickup truck and headed to his daughter's house not far away.
But he never made it. Tice, 64, died after crashing his pickup truck Sunday, only a day after Lana, his wife of nearly four decades, died of cancer. The couple's daughter, Kellie Ittner, said the family was devastated, but grateful death didn't part her parents for very long.
"He said he couldn't go home without her there, and he never did make it home again. I feel like it was a very divine plan," she told AOL News in a phone interview today. "He was seriously heartbroken. He would have been miserable to go on without her."
Ittner, 29, said she and her siblings were waiting for their father to arrive at her home Sunday to make funeral arrangements when they were visited by a state trooper instead, who told them Tice had died on a Michigan highway. No one else was seriously injured in the crash, according to The Saginaw News, which first reported the story.
Ittner said her young children, 7-year-old Brendan and 4-year-old Melodie, were close to their grandparents and are still struggling to understanding their deaths. "They keep asking me, 'When are Papa and Grandma coming back?'" she said.
Steven Tice was a stoic man but had been unusually affectionate in his wife's final days, his daughter said. Lana had fought breast cancer for 16 years, and Steven was right by her side when she died April 2. "He's always been such a tough guy, and we're not an affectionate family," Ittner said. "But Saturday, after my mom passed, the emotions I saw ... I couldn't believe it. He even kissed me on the cheek."
The Clio, Mich., couple will be buried together, with Steven holding an urn containing Lana's ashes, as she had requested.
Ittner said her parents were partners to the end. "Before they died, [my dad] said, 'She's not losing the battle, I'm losing the battle with her,'" Ittner recalled. "He had been with her through everything."
