[stcredzero]

There are a lot of instances where long married men lose their wives then die very soon afterwards. When there's a correlation of something with longevity and removing the something is soon followed by death, then there's good reason to believe the causation theory.

[barrow-rider]

True for both partners -- usually after one dies the elderly widow/widower tend to have ~5 years or less.

Some of that is just timing, like if the average age of death per the actuary tables is like 79, and your spouse dies at 80, you're statistically going fairly soon as well.