If your SO died, how deep would be the personal crisis?

It was tough. Six years later it still is to some extent. After forty years together a couple isn't just two people who happen to live together. For instance my wife always had a better memory than I so after a while I simply relied on her to remember people, events, anniversaries, etc. Then bowel cancer. Two years of hell for her. Then a big hole in my life. I'm filling it now with ways of being that I think were latent in me all the time but not expressed because of a combination of lack of need and them not being suited to our life together.

Essentially I have spent much of that six years reinventing myself.