urequests and r.close()

[kjm]

The text book says

n=1; m=n 

doesn't create a new object for m it just references the same object that n is referencing.

When I do

r=urequests.get('https://someurl'); val=r.text; r.close(); return val

why does val still retain it's value when r.close() destroys the urequests return object? I came up with the above because

r=urequests.get('https://someurl'); r.close(); return r.text 

caused OSErrors from urequests. But now I'm wondering why it works?