`Although stories of spouses dying within days or weeks of each other have the ring of urban legends, they’re often true. George L. Engel, MD, a psychiatrist who pioneered studying the effects of psychological forces on health and disease, described dozens of cases in a classic 1971 article in the Annals of Internal Medicine. In some cases, the surviving spouse collapsed on hearing the news of his or her partner’s death. In others, the survivor seemed to make a conscious decision to die. In a chronicle of a death foretold, legendary New Yorker editor William Maxwell died within a week of his wife after telling a former colleague, “I’ve decided there’s not much reason to stick around, now that Emmy’s gone, and I’m doing my best never to take another bite of food.”`

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