Saturday
The heart attack suffered by the husband of one of Uvalde’s victims is one of many instances of the massacre’s collateral damage. Along with all the children who were killed, three more were orphaned when first their mother and then their father died.
MSNBC commentator Malcolm Nance tweeted out the following note after hearing about the incident:
To new widows/widowers: When I lost my wife my mother-in-law called me the next day and warned me to wake up to life because Takotsubo Myocardia aka Broken Heart Syndrome is REAL. It can kill you…with a heart attack. I could feel it coming too. I started running…in Paris.
Henry Fielding mentions the danger in Tom Jones. In this case, the broken heart is caused by a sibling betrayal but the outcome is the same:
The doctor went directly to London, where he died soon after of a broken heart; a distemper which kills many more than is generally imagined, and would have a fair title to a place in the bill of mortality, did it not differ in one instance from all other diseases—viz., that no physician can cure it.