In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss    

by Amy Bloom

We meet Amy Bloom and her husband, Brian Ameche, in the first few pages of this funny, sad, and challenging memoir, on their way to Switzerland. This trip, she writes, has “all the accoutrements of our other trips but is also like nothing we’ve ever done.” And that is an understatement for this trip is to Dignitas in Zurich, a non-profit organization providing “accompanied suicide” to patients who qualify and can pay for its services.  Its motto is “To live with dignity; To die with dignity”   http://www.dignitas.ch/   In the following pages, we learn that, within 24 hours of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2019 at the age of 67, Brian chooses to end his life. “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees… I want people to miss me and not be relieved when I’m gone.” The “long good-bye” was not for him. He asks Amy to arrange it however she can. And she does with a broken heart, questioning throughout: “Would a better wife had said ‘no’?”

Bloom, best-selling author and therapist, describes in her warm and witty style the time between Brian’s diagnosis and his death in June 2020 at Dignitas. Blending the past and present, she tells of the couple’s meeting and their happy, loving middle-age marriage. The book is filled with details that show the couple going through many of the stages of grieving including anger. For example, Bloom writes, “I mentally review all the people—not even bad people, just people I happen to know—who should have to die instead of him.” As the days grow shorter, Bloom recalls in an interview, "I very much wanted to make those days stand still…It was painful, and sad. There were moments of connection and moments of real distance because I could feel that he was really moving away."  The love in the family is apparent. Brian’s mother is Amy’s biggest ally. He continues to enjoy his 4 young granddaughters (although he’s forgotten their names) who call him Babu. With humor, Bloom writes of one of Brian’s brother’s offers to shoot him. When he was reminded that he would go to prison, his brother’s response was: “I’d be fine in jail. I don’t go out much anyway.” Bloom notes that “I have never liked the man more.”

We are with Amy as she deals with all the frustrations of searching for resources and alternatives to Dignitas (one of a few in the world that provide this service)— dealing with medical professionals, searching for medical records, going through psychiatric interviews, and managing the $10,000 fee. This would prove almost impossible in the US given American’s limited right-to-die laws. Just 10 states — California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, as well the District of Columbia — allow doctor-assisted suicide for mentally healthy patients with no more than six months to live. She continued her searching and, finally, Brian was accepted by Dignitas.

At the end, she writes: “He falls asleep holding my hand and his head falls back a little on the neck pillow (whose purpose I now understand). His breathing changes and it’s the last time I will hear him sleeping, breathing deeply and steadily, the way he has done lying beside me for almost fifteen years…He is quite pale and I see that he is gone from this world.”

I was concerned about this as my book club choice, described by one reviewer as a “courageous howl of a memoir.” Although this is a controversial subject, Bloom’s wonderful writing helped us to share our thoughts about assisted suicide, dying, and living with love and humor. We appreciated Brian’s hope that his story would get people talking about the end of life and living fully until then.

P.S. Right now advocates are meeting and talking with Massachusetts legislators, urging their support to pass the End-of-Life Options Act to give terminally ill people the option to end unbearable suffering and die peacefully. For more information, check out https://www.compassionandchoices.org/in-your-state/massachusetts

--Jane Hilburt-Davis