Thinking that it would be best to get it over with quickly, she took out her late husband's old army pistol and made the decision to shoot herself in the heart, since it was badly broken in the first place.

Not wanting to miss the vital organ and become an incapacitated burden to someone, she called her doctor's office to inquire as to just exactly where the heart would be on a woman.

The doctor said, "Your heart would be just below your left breast."

Later that night Mildred was admitted to the hospital with a gunshot wound to her knee. Boom-tish!

Now that's a very ordinary email joke doing the rounds, but it piqued my curiosity about this notion of a broken heart actually causing death.

Earlier this year an old friend, Maureen, died of multiple brain tumours at age 70. Her husband passed away just three months later, his body found crumpled beside the old marital bed by a worried neighbour. He may have hit his head, doctors said, but they couldn't be sure.

At the funeral, the official line was "Nick died of a broken heart". Mourners seemed somehow gladdened by this romantic explanation, as if it poetically captured the essence of true love.

I just found it incredibly sad. Medically, it seemed a cop-out.

And yet ... new evidence from the world of obscure research projects has shown that the intense physical and emotional stress of recent bereavement, particularly of a partner or child, can, in fact, directly bring on a heart attack.

Lead researcher, University of Sydney lecturer Dr Thomas Buckley, says: "Research over the last 50 years has shown that when someone very close to you dies, you're at a significantly greater risk of dying yourself."

Apparently more than half of the excess deaths closely following bereavement are caused by heart attack, and age is not a factor. Those least likely to be struck down are the grievers who are better prepared for death.