A pair of identical twins died within hours of one another after battling separate illnesses.
Alan Bates, 70, appeared to talk to his twin brother Geoff Bates before the pair died just three hours apart.
His daughter Shelly Bates said she knew her father only had a few months to live after he had been diagnosed with throat cancer.
She described it as "surreal" how her uncle Geoff had passed away from multiple organ failure while she was on the way to say goodbye to her father, reports Yorkshire Live.
When she got there, her dad appeared to be talking to Geoff and said “I’m on my way, I’ll see you soon” just before he died.
Shelley, 40, said: “It was just really surreal. Me and my brother, Andrew Bates, had to travel from Sheffield to Coventry to go and see him.
“But halfway down, we got a call saying that Uncle Geoff had passed away. We got down to where my dad was, and then 15 to 20 minutes after that, my dad passed away."
She added: “My auntie said it was as though my dad was speaking to my uncle. He just kept saying “I’m on my way, I’ll see you soon”.
“When we got there, he was kind of staring off to one particular spot in the corner of the ceiling, and he kept looking at that spot and laughing.”
Geoff's daughter Katie Sellers, 46, said it was devastating to receive the news of Alan's death so soon after her dad passed away on June 13.
She added there was also something comforting that the inseparable and generous twins, originally from Sheffield, had departed “this world together”.
She said: “It was devastating, obviously, but it was also at the same time quite comforting in a way that they both went at the same time.
“For them to come into this world together and leave this world together, it was quite comforting in a way. And they’re together forever now, side by side.”
According to Katie, the joint funeral they held on July 19 gave the pair a "lovely farewell".
She added: “From when they arrived at the crematorium, they parked so that both the back doors were facing each other.
“They then brought them both out together and had them walked in, side by side, together.
“It was a lovely tribute, and they had matching flowers on their coffins. It was a lovely farewell."
Katie, from Rotherham, said the pair were "very close" to each other when they were growing up.
She said they were always causing trouble due to their similarities and had their names sewed into their jumpers so their teachers could tell them apart.
“I think the whole family were very close, but especially my dad and Al," she continued.
"We used to go camping together when we were kids – stuff like that.
“When they were kids, they would cause a nuisance, pretend to be each other and things like that. They used to have a bit of fun with things like that.
“While everybody used to say they looked identical, us as their children, we didn’t see that. They never looked the same to us.
“But other people, like my husband, said they were totally identical, and if you were speaking to them on the phone, you never knew who you were speaking to.”
Alan was a joiner by trade and had taught city and guild courses while Geoff had worked as an electrician and then as a computer engineer.
Geoff then moved to Rotherham with his two children while Alan stayed in Sheffield with his four children, before retiring in Tenerife in 2018.
The twins would always spend Christmas and New Year at each other's houses and even when apart, they would regularly video call each other.
Alan had returned to the UK when he got throat cancer, while Geoff suffered a mini-stroke, leaving him hospitalised before he died.
