FRESNO, Calif. — After spending 67 years together as devoted husband and wife, there was no question how Floyd and Violet Hartwig would end their lives — together.

Sensing the couple was close to death, their children pushed their two hospice beds together and gently placed their father’s hand in the mother’s palm.

Floyd, 90, died first. Violet, 89, followed five hours later. They died Feb. 11 at home, just as they had wished, the family said.

“They wanted to go together,” their daughter, Donna Scharton, said Thursday. “It was meant to be that way.”

The two knew each other as children, growing up in the California farming community of Easton. They were married in 1947.

The couple remained active until recently. Around the holidays, the family noticed that Violet’s dementia had worsened, and in late January a doctor said Floyd’s failing kidneys gave him two weeks to live.