Sir Edward and Lady Downes chose a good death. Let us applaud them When couples have been together for a lifetime, grown old and become like two halves of one person, dread starts to stalk them. How will the one cope when the other dies? How to contemplate life alone? Increasingly, they wake up with that question, that terrible anticipation of emptiness, and they go to sleep with it too. Understand this and you understand a lot.