I'm a little surprised that this needed to be said. I wasn't aware of the event or any of the people involved, but the first five sentences made it clear that this is a piece by a woman whose husband has just died. It didn't really make me dig for it.
I think the GP was trying to preemptively answer the question "why is this on HN?". Usually when there is a story about someone's recent death here, it's either someone relevant to the community (e.g. death in the family of one of fellow HNers) or relevant to the technological world (e.g. famous computer scientists, physicists, etc.).
