“I don't want a long goodbye”
The assisted dying debate is gaining momentum in the UK, I spoke to Amy Bloom about what happens when your partner chooses to "die on his feet, rather than live on his knees"
There’s a conversation going on in the various parts the UK at the moment, about Assisted Dying. Earlier this week, the Isle of Man became the first to legalise it, while in England and Wales, the private members bill that has been making waves now looks like it might be stalled until 2029. In Scotland MSPs are expected to vote in the coming months on a markedly different bill to that being discussed in England and Wales. (As yet there is no bill affecting Northern Ireland.)
That’s a whistlestop tour, obviously, but it’s a roundabout way of saying that this debate has been gaining quiet momentum here. And it reminded me of a conversation I had with American therapist Amy Bloom, whose husband Brian Ameche was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers (as you’ll discover diagnoses are rarely that straightforward) in his early 60s. When he decided he would “rather die on his feet than live on his knees” that decision sent the couple on a journey from the East Coast of the United States to Dignitas in Switzerland.
I spoke to Amy back in 2022 (when she published a heartbreaking account of that experience, In Love, a tender, hopeful and passionate love letter to a man whose belief in human agency extended to his own death).
Our conversation is tough in parts. It ranges from a candid discussion of early dementia diagnosis, the right to die and learning to live with her husband's decision to do so, to the advantages of being older when you fall in love, why you should marry because of each other's faults, not in spite of them and her lifelong love of tarot.
He didn't want to leave. I didn't want him to leave. But, as he said, he was going to have to leave no matter what. And I think that's the hard thing to face.
Sam: Amy, In Love is… full on, in the best possible way. Tell me a bit about the experience of writing it.
Amy: I didn't start out really writing it. I just had a lot of notes and I had a lot of notes often, which were just like the notes that any caregiver has, you know: vitamin B12, pick up at Walgreens, appointment. Brian has a workout at the gym, get him to the gym, and then come back in time to do something else, you know? So I had a lot of notes like that. And then every once in a while when something particularly awful happened, I would jot down a few notes in a notebook. I will actually show you the notebook, see, there we go.
And did they end up forming the basis?
Yeah. So that was really the core of it. And then, after Brian's death, I began writing a little bit more and just sort of stringing the beads chronologically so I could remember everything that happened.
He actually asked you to write In Love, didn't he?
Yes. He felt very strongly about that. I mean, you could say ‘ask’, but I would say it was a little more imperative than that!
It did sound, from how he comes across, erm, forceful suggestions.
Yes, yes. He was capable of those, forceful suggestions, and this was certainly one of them. I mean, he just felt that the subject was important and that people did not know what it was like to try to go through this process or how somebody could come to this decision and he wanted me to write about it.