The fact that they were admitted to hospice means they had a limited life span, but that does not make the death any less sad or poignant.

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These are people who felt trapped in a bad marriage or onerous care-giving duties and widowhood offered relief and escape. The old paradigm would have seen this absence of grief as emotional inhibition or a form of denial, but in our view, these are people for whom bereavement serves as the end of a chronic source of stress.

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But 46 percent of the widows and widowers in this study reported that they had satisfying marriages. They believed that life is fair and they accepted that death is a part of life.

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The couple that dies close to one another from love does seem to work on a story level. But under dry, clinical observation it doesn't work.

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