A marriage separated and reunited by illness

José Vicente Cobo and Maribel Vidal in their home in Alcalá de Guadaíra, in 2021, before she entered a residence.

/ COURTESY OF REYES COBO

José Vicente Cobo did not hesitate to abandon his job as a Mathematics teacher at a school in Alcalá de Guadaíra (Seville) when his wife, Maribel Vidal, collapsed at home.

They detected a brain tumor that, after being removed, robbed him of all his ability to move or eat.

“He barely got out of bed,” says his daughter Reyes.

From that moment, 20 years ago, he became his shadow, his companion and companion for everything.

Since 2022 she has been in a residence where he has gone to visit her daily, until a month and a half ago she suffered a stroke, which has left half her body immobile.

An illness united them and it seemed that another was going to separate them, but the desperate call from their daughter, through social networks, which this newspaper has echoed, to demand greater speed so that both could reconnect their lives in the The same senior center where his mother lives, has made the Andalusian Government react.

The Inclusion Department has contacted Reyes after learning about her case to advise her on the steps to follow for family reunification that, the sources consulted explain, she had not processed well.

“Entry into a residence is successive or simultaneous in the case of older people who are spouses or de facto partners if they request it and it is enough for the family member who is in the residence to have a dependency assessment.

In the case of Reyes, it is not necessary for her father to be assessed,” explain the sources consulted.

The process is considerably speeded up, in this way, because the average to obtain the assessment and entry into a residence in Andalusia, as explained by Martín Durán, president of the Federation of Andalusian Organizations for the Elderly (FOAM,) is 561 days, according to January data published in Imserso.

“Tomorrow morning a social worker will help me fill out the papers,” Reyes explains what she has been told by the counseling service.

She thus dispels the anguish of thinking that her father was going to suffer all the heat of the Sevillian summer in the 50 square meter apartment that Reyes shares with her brother, who suffers from a 72% disability.

“I had to bring him here without means, with a second-hand articulated bed and a rental crane,” she details.

In addition to dealing with José Vicente's deteriorating state of health, she also has to temper the spirits of her 36-year-old brother "who needs peace of mind and her own space that, right now, has been invaded by our father," she explains. she.

In addition, you will also get the peace of mind of knowing that your parents will be together again.

“He left everything about her to take care of her,” says Reyes.

It was three years ago, when José Vicente, who was 68 at the time, realized that his strength was beginning to fail him to give his wife all the attention he required, and they decided to find her a residence.

It wasn't easy because in all this time she had generated such a need for her care that she would self-harm or stop eating "scared because she didn't know where my father was," explains Reyes.

“She has psychiatric care due to that emotional dependency,” she explains.

After trying several of them, two years ago they ended up in a senior center in Alcalá de Guadaíra with all the services that Maribel needs, where José Vicente went to visit her every day.

Until a month and a half ago he suffered a stroke from which he was discharged just a week ago and which has left him with serious consequences.

“She speaks incoherently, the right side of her body is paralyzed and she has lost 50% of her vision,” explains her daughter.

This situation has turned upside down the fragile stability that Reyes, 40, had endured since, when they decided to admit her mother to the senior center, she left the family home, where she also helped care for Maribel and in the his brother's.

Then her father moved alone to another smaller rental home, in Alcalá de Guadaíra, and she went with her brother to an apartment of just 50 square meters in Los Pajaritos, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Seville and Spain.

Reyes worked part-time to be able to take care of her brother, but her father's stroke has forced him to leave her job as a dance assistant at a dance school.

Debt and low income

The hope that after days of anguish has just settled in the heart of Reyes is only overshadowed by the narrow economic situation in which he has just plunged.

In recent years, José Vicente had spent more than he had been able to save and collect, through advances on his pension or loans, on his wife's residence and on renting his house.

Debts amounting to 20,000 euros and which he always kept silent.

“I thought we could keep going, but it's impossible,” explains his daughter.

Without work, what comes to the house is her mother's non-contributory pension of around 500 euros and around 400 euros of dependency benefit from her brother.

Since she came of age, she has not stopped caring for someone in her family.

“They call me the caregiver,” she says with a sarcasm full of resignation.

“Just by going out to throw out the trash and having the sun shine on me makes me tired of crying,” she says.

That is why he decided to post some videos on his social networks to demand financial help to try to pay off his father's debt and assume the cost of the medications that are not covered by the insurance and the rental of the tow truck to drive his father and ask that the reunification process is done urgently.

“If I hadn't made the video, I don't know what I would have done,” she says.

“Now let's see how I pay the debt,” she says, although the relief in her voice overcomes the uncertainty.

Reyes is convinced that the best thing for both José Vicente and Maribel, who is now 66 years old, is for them to be together again, as they have been for half their lives, to recover the closeness so necessary for Maribel and guarantee her peace of mind.

“It seems that for the moment he has understood that I am not going to see her, but at any moment he could change and harm himself again,” says her daughter.

In Andalusia there are 175 cases of people occupying places arranged for family reunification, of which 70 are in the province of Seville, according to data provided by the Ministry of Social Inclusion.

A procedure that she will begin this Wednesday, long before the appointment she had scheduled with social services for March 22 to begin the procedures for a dependency assessment that her father did not need.

“Little by little,” says Reyes, aware of the push that having appeared in the media has meant to solve her case.

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