FIGURE 3.19 Life satisfaction before, during the year of, and after a spouse’s death In periodic lifetime surveys of more than 30,000 Germans, researchers identified 513 widowed people who had not remarried after the death of a spouse. They found that life satisfaction began to dip during the year before the spouse’s death, dropped significantly during the year of the death itself, and then eventually rebounded to nearly the earlier level (Lucas et al., 2003).