Tehachapi News

Local hospice patient dies with husband of 12 days at her side

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Darlene Moriarity Slota knew her marriage wouldn’t last.

But it wasn’t for lack of love.

The Tehachapi newlywed died peacefully Thursday night with her husband, Scott Slota, by her side.

Just 11 days before, the couple had exchanged vows in an intimate ceremony at the bride’s home near Tehachapi.

“This is not about tragedy,” Scott said Friday. “This is about faith, hope and love.”

The 48-year-old bride was fully aware that cancer had metastasized in her liver. By her own choice, anti-cancer treatment had stopped months before. She knew her time was short.

“I want so much to be married to the man I love,” she told The Californian the day before her wedding. At that time, she and everyone around her, including staff from Hoffmann Hospice, believed she would live just a day or two longer.

But she beat everyone’s expectations.

“Darlene wanted to be a married woman,” Scott said. “She got 12 days of it — and wanted every day she could get.”

She died in Hoffmann’s hospice room at Glenwood Gardens where she was moved a few days ago. Scott was with her nearly every minute.

Toward the end, she could not speak, Scott said. She could not even communicate with him by blinking her eyes.

But she knew he was there, he said. “She was in my arms.”

He read Bible verses and literature to her, held her, comforted her.

It was one of the most difficult times he’s ever experiences, Scott said. And one of the most beautiful.

The couple met in 2000 online. Darlene was living in California, Scott in Florida. By 2002, Darlene had moved to Miami to be close to Scott.

She worked as an accountant at the company he was building.

She could light up a room with her smile, said Darlene’s longtime friend Geneva Dassa, who attended the wedding Feb. 8.

Darlene was ready to go, ready to leave behind the pain of her illness for the bliss of a spiritual existence, Dassa said.

Becoming a married woman was her final earthly wish.

As the bride and groom turned to each other at the ceremony, the bitterness of the disease seemed to melt away for a moment, maybe for an eternity.

“She whispered in my ear,” Scott remembered. “She said, ‘I feel like a shooting star.’”

Story posted online Feb. 21, 2009; Print edition: Feb. 25, 2009