I have several stories of cause/effect. One is of my brother in law after my sister's death. Six weeks after she died, his heart 'broke', almost literally. Their daughter, living at home, is an RN and her quick action plus the fact that an EMT lived on the same block and came running was the only thing that saved him. Almost 10 years later, he is still living but his heart is more than 30% gone. Doctors talked about cutting it away but decided against it.

Leenia: "I agree that old couples may well die within a short time, but you can also kill an old person by taking them out of her home. At least, that's what a friend of mine who is a social worker for the aged tells me. So it's not love, it's the shock to a frail system of losing the familiar."

When I was a girl I worked in a nursing home that was church-owned. An elderly couple had willed their home to the church and when they became increasingly at risk whle living on their own, the church started pressuring them to move into the nursing home. They resisted for more than six months but one day the word came that they had capitulated.

The nursing home, all excited, revamped one of the rooms, putting in a double bed and making the room 'homey'.

The couple came. That night the man died in his sleep alongside his sleeping wife. A week or so later she fell and broke her hip. She died.

Within three weeks the whole thing was over.