What author Amy Bloom learned from her husband's decision to end his life

Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers one question. Now, what you write a lot about love? What do you think in this era of your life? Being in love means? I think everybody is different, everybody has different goals. I think I'm lucky in that I feel like I can take care of myself. I don't need somebody to pay my bills. I mean, I could

actually always use somebody to take out the garbage. One of my daughters said, you know, mommy, that's not a gender thing. I said, you are one hundred percent right. I don't care who takes out the garbage. As long as it's not me, that doesn't matter. To me what their pronouns are. As long as it's not Amy Bloom,

anybody can take out the garbage. You want to feel like you have a real partner, and I think it's important not to be fooled by somebody who can occupy the space of partner without actually being present as a partner. You want to see and be seen. My guest today is New York Times bestselling author and licensed therapist Amy Bloom.

Amy knows a thing or two about love. Her latest book, In Love, a Memoir of Love and Loss, chronicles her late husband's Alzheimer's diagnosis and their decision as a couple to forego the long goodbye and seek end of life treatment overseas. It's a gut wrenching story, one that left me wondering how I would react had I been in her situation. Amy's insight, her maturity, and her reverence for life is striking. I'm so grateful that she wrote this beautiful book and made the time to talk with me

about it. So here is Amy Bloom. First of all, Amy Bloom, thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. I'm glad to be here. I'm coming off of your latest book, which is called In Love, a memoir of love and loss and for people who don't yet know it. It chronicles the discovery that your late husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and his decision and then your decision together to travel to Switzerland to enable him to have a physician assistant suicide. The book is about love.

It's an unselfish view of probably doing the most difficult thing that I can imagine anybody having to be a part of. But before we talk about it, can you tell us and me a little bit about Brian? Oh? Sure, we met under kind of elderly rom com circumstances. We were what do you qualify elderly? Please, we're a world weren't so old, you know, I'm older now. But we were both Democrats in a small Connecticut Republican town and our paths crossed. We were both sort of active Democrats.

We worked at the hot dog stand at the Durham Fair and we had been friends for quite a long time and fell in love. And you know, we're a little bit scandalous in our small town. But wrote it out and Brian, who had chosen not to have kids, really embraced my kids, and even more the grandchildren that came after that. As he said, he felt like he had robbed a bank. He'd gone right from being himself to being a grandfather and didn't have to have kids. He was a big dog and either you like that

kind of thing or you don't. I mean, I certainly understand why people might not. But he took up a lot of space, took up a lot of space physically. He had a big laugh, big smile, and endless capacity to schmooz and small talk. You know. I used to say, you'd walk into a room with Brian and twenty minutes later, somebody is coming over and saying, you and Brian are coming to Thanksgiving, right, you know, And you know he would always be like, hey, you know, did you play football?

You know, you look like you might have played football, to people who looked absolutely not at all like they had played football, But they were so flattered and he was so warm. He was just like a big warm guy. And you were married at the time, or I was living with a partner at the time. Yeah, we both did. We both did terrible things and left her partners and

fell in love and we're very very happy now. That's a courageous thing for both of you to do, to have the wherewithal and courage, if you will, to say I want this, no longer want this. How did you approach telling the people in your lives that there was a big, big change. Oh, that was hard. I mean my children were grown people. Everybody was grown ups. I would have found that very hard. You can't make it into good news, and you can't protect yourself by pretending

that you are protecting the other person. You have to be I think fairly straightforward about it and understand that what is good for you is not necessarily good for somebody else. And even if you have persuaded yourself that it might be better in the long run for everybody, in some sense, I always feel like that's none of your business. Nobody asked you to plot out the rest

of their lives for them, Thank you very much. So. I was friends with Grace Paley, a wonderful writer, and I have been talking to her about my relationship that was not going particularly well. And she picked up her hand, she tapped on her watch, and she said, TikTok, darling,

you think between fifty and eighty it's minutes, it's seconds. Oh, but you know I think that that is it's a through line, and first of all, as a mom, to be an example to tell your children, showing them that it is important to choose what you need and what you want, you know, with empathy obviously and understanding that

it may somehow be hurtful. But the interesting thing about that, and that I think is a through line too in your book, is that very often in these situations and with Brian's health, when you tell people in your life, inevitably their response is not about you. It's really about them. Oh one hundred. To be able to say this is going to be inconvenient or may be hurtful or sad for you, but I need to do this for myself,

I think is a great lesson as a parent. And it's also a lesson to say, you know, if you're unhappy or if something's not working for you, the time is now for you to take care of yourself, because if you don't know, one really will. I think that's true, and I think it's always hard. I think it's hard to take responsibility for your own life. I think especially women are so good at responsibility for everybody else's lives and for being supportive of everybody else's choices that I

think that sometimes we run out of steam. Yeah, you know, when we finally get to the bottom of the list, it's like, oh my god, how many more useful, responsible, intelligent, thoughtful decisions do I have to make today? And you kind of run that you're at the bottom of the list. And the irony, though, is in when did you notice that Brian was not himself or not well? I would say probably three years before the diagnosis. Just he seemed different.

And I will say and probably anybody who has any relationship with a middle aged man of any kind probably recognizes that there's a certain amount of self absorption. No and no, I'm going out on I'm going out on a lampboy, You're really going out I know, I really am. I expect to switch board to light up momentarily with people screaming no, no. So it was a little hard to tell, but it was just not him. He became

more withdrawn. The daughter of a close friend of ours and particularly of his, who had known him since she was a baby, went to her dad and said, his uncle, Brian, okay, And that was a very early canary in the coal mine. But part of my experience with that is when you love the person who has Alzheimer's, the temptation to not see and to explain away and to hope for the best and to take the position of oh, good days and bad days is just irresistible. Of course, how long

had you been married by that point? Oh, we had been married, oh, about twelve years. And I could just he had always been a fairly big reader. He wasn't really eating, and he was part of a book club, was part of a book club, and he had always really enjoyed it. And then it seemed to me overnight, but of course it wasn't. He was so irritated by the emails or by the texts, or next week is at Bob's house. Any little change in the routine was sort of disturbing to him. And it's not like we

were in our eighties, you know. He was in his early sixties, and he was unable to do his job, which was very painful for him, and probably the big the biggest red flag, because it was not a design problem as far as I could tell from when he was talking about it. It was things like he could not get the printer to work in the office, and he would keep going to the administrative assistant repeatedly and asking for her help. And then it really hurt his

feelings because she was annoyed. You know. The tenth time, my mother was diagnosed with dementia, but not Alzheimer's per se, but dementia. And she, you know, she didn't cook a lot at all, but she did set a table, always beautifully set a table. And so I asked her one day to set the table, and two hours later, half of one setting was put out in another. And then I said, hey, Mom, I just got these new cups.

Would you take the stickers off the bottom, and that she could sit down for another two hours and just peeled the stickers off, and I thought, oh, something, you know, And then she she tried to heat up soup on the open flame in a ceramic bowl and I said, yeah, hey, ma, that's probably pretty dangerous to do that. You probably should put it in a pot first, and she said, ah, fuck it, forget the middleman. So there was humor, but that was where she dealt. She dealt with things. So

the diagnosis comes and it's devastating. What was the most devastating part about getting that diagnosis for him? I think sitting there in the office, and you know, and listeners who have gone through this themselves with family members, you know, they don't say, oh, it's Alzheimer's. They say it's probably Alzheimer's. There would be no way of knowing until we did

an autopsy. But you know, signs point to yes, and you know, there's really no preparing for it, because the fact is, if you have dementia, preparing for it doesn't mean a lot. It was a terrible shock, but this is what I had been thinking for the last year. I think the worst thing for me was having to sit next to Brian and watch him hear it, because I know he did not expect it. How long after he gets the diagnosis does he start discussing assisted suicide

and the desire to not continue? Less than a week? Really, I think maybe what I didn't, what I didn't convey about Brian when I said he was a big dog, is that the line we used in our family is that he was a hard man to stop and he knew his mind. You know, he had been a very good defensive. I don't know what the hell the position is called a something, a tight end, a defensive something something I don't know what everybody like that, and um,

he was a hard man to stop. I used to say his three principles were take yes for an answer, better to ask permission than forgiveness, because he was raised Catholic, and if there's going to be a fight, throw the first punch. And I think that spoke entirely to his response about the diagnosis, which is there's going to be a fight, I want to choose, I want to decide the terms. I want to be in charge of my life. And as he said to me, he said, you know me, I would rather die on my feet than live on

my knees. And that is really what he was like. Well, and then if you say he knows his mind and then gets the very diagnosis that is robbing him of his mind, right, you couldn't give him a worse And that's also why the clock was ticking. And I didn't, I mean, we didn't know that at first, but once we did the research and I discovered the presence of Dignitas, which now, by the way, has a second organization very

much like it. It's a nonprofit. And if you can demonstrate that you have discernment and judgment and you wish to end your life. They will be supportive of that. They will ask you one hundred and fifty times if you are sure you want to go through with it, and they are very supportive of people changing their minds. But they are available for that. But you have to

have judgment and discernment. And so the fantasy which all of us, I think have in that situation is five six, seven years down the road, when things are really bad, we can go to dignitas. But that's not how it's set up. You have to have judgment, you have to have cognitive discernment, and you have to be able to demonstrate it. And so as Brian said to me, oh, I get it. If you don't go before you want to go, you don't get to go at all. How do you ward off the just a little bit more,

just a little more time? How do you do that? How do you cross over to be completely in support of his decision? I mean I did at the beginning say to Brian, you don't have to do this. I can take care of you. We can do this, I promise you, and he said, you're not hearing me. He said, this is my life, and this is going to be my death. That's got to be do you recognize let me let me put it this way. Are there characteristics in your personality at that time that surprised you. I

don't think so. I think for me it was not you know, the way the mother rushes out and lifts up the car to save the baby. It wasn't really like that. I mean, I have done hard things in my life before, nothing like this. Something we used to say two and about each other in our marriage. Brian would say, yeah, Amy, lets me be me. My policy is let Amy be Amy. And maybe that's the advantage of getting together later in life. There can't be that many fantasies about how people are going to change in

the last thirty years of their life. I hope not for other people's say, but you know, we we absolutely took each other on as is, you know. And I also admired him for his decision and also issues that he had thought about. It wasn't that he had never thought about right to life, right to death, because he had. It was something that mattered to him. He had been a volunteer at Planned Parenthood, walking women from the parking lot to the clinic since he was nineteen years old.

He felt that people should have choices, and he felt strongly that he, Brian should have a choice. And I think I supported it because it was very much what he wanted and he was very clear about that, but also because probably if I had been in his position, I would have felt the same way. Was he angry that in this country and in his own country that it wasn't allowed? And that was he upset with that? He was. I mean, we didn't dwell on it, but you know, I did the research because you know, he

had been like we drive to Vermont. I was like, yes, we can drive to Vermont, but that will be the end of this process. Because the only way you will be considered for physician assisted end of life process in Vermont or any of the other states in America is if you have two doctors declare that you have six months to live in a terminal illness. Well, essentially that means no one with dementia of any kind is eligible

for right to die in America. Do you think that you were able to process your own grief for what was happening while Brian was alive, or did that happen way after? Well, it turns out you can get a head start on grief and just keep going. That was

my discovery that you know, explain that well. I would say I cried every I think it's safe to say I cried every day after the diagnosis, every single day, sometimes for a couple of minutes, sometimes for half an hour, sometimes while I was grocery shopping, and I barely even

noticed that I was crying. And I had been doing some grieving even before the diagnosis, because I missed my husband, and since he wasn't like a shy, retiring person before, that absence had real texture it was, it had real chilliness, it had real depth, and I just missed him, and that would make me cry as well. Did you ever have anger about the injustice of it? I don't think I'm a I'm a y me kind of person when

it comes to bad news. I think I'm more like, oh uh huh, all right, now, what has to happen now? I think we were both angry at the circumstance. And there were a couple of times long before the diagnosis, like a couple of years, where he just was being so difficult and distant and demanding and also puzzling, like he would express a very strong wish for something to happen, and then by the time he got to the end of the request, I was like, honey, I'm so sorry.

I don't I don't understand what it is you're asking for. And then he would be furious, which I understand because it was frustrating and frightening for him, and that would certainly lead to sort of you know, and then I'd be like, why are you mad at me? But mostly I thought it was a terrible thing and that my job was to help him through it. So in addition to being an author, you're also a psychotherapist and you were a clinical social worker. Oh yeah, I keep I

keep my license up. Oh good, Okay, well, I know what lesson do you think from that profession helped you to just deal and accept the reality and process it. Well, I'm sure some of the more lessons from having been a therapist. I mean, I think probably it was useful, especially being trained as a clinical social worker, which I think is very much being engaged with sort of the facts and realities of life. And so I'm a good observer.

I could observe the changes, and I think probably because of my training, I was prepared not to ignore them. I mean I did my best. I had a lot of moments where I would sort of fantasize that maybe this was really this, it wasn't dementia. But after a couple of hours I would usually come back and go, something is really wrong and we need to get a diagnosis. And as you're making this decision and you're making the plans together and you're processing it, are there people in

your families that you protect from the knowledge? Are there those you tell? Well? I think you know, as it is for most people with their families. You know, it depends on who you are closer to and also what the circumstances are. I mean, anybody who's gone through grief,

just like you with your mom. You know that the person that you've always been very warm and friendly with, who apparently cannot even bring themselves to send you a condolence text is on one side of the continuum, and the lady down the street to whom you have barely ever spoken, who brings you a casserole every four days for three weeks, is at the other end of the spectrum.

And you never know, you never know how people are going to respond to grief and loss, and who is going to just suddenly level up and who's going to be a tremendous disappointment. And one of the things I decided at some point was that I was not going to hold a grudge. I felt moments of panic as I was reading the book. And what shucks the heck

out of me is that the actual process, it just happens. Yeah, all that love, all that commitment, all that intimacy, all the planning, that everything, and like, I don't know how long it's over, and then you just kind of have to get up and leave stuff and go to the airport. It's so unremarkable. Yes, and it's the most remarkable thing that I can imagine anybody going through. Were you numb, no,

did you panic? No? I just I would have panicked at that moment, like wait, wait, wait, come back, come back, come back. I'm sorry. We didn't mean it like that, regret. I think I think if I had done something like that, he would have been so distressed. I mean, he was so clear, and he was talking about football, talk about football,

and then finally he stopped. Then we held hands and we you know, we told each other we loved each other a million times, and we held hands and literally it was that phrase which I had never liked, you know, to say that somebody had passed or somebody had passed away, And I always thought, oh, what is that for. Why not just say that they are dead? No, he passed. I mean you could feel the transition and then he

didn't have to struggle anymore. It was quite beautiful. And I was so happy that you said multiple times how much you loved each other, and and then to write this book. You are giving many people a gift. Again. I wish you didn't have I wish you didn't have to have a reason to write this book. But writing the book give you any relief or or help or solace or well, I'm a writer, and so you know. I imagine there's a piece of it that would be like somebody else who really likes to keep a clean house,

or somebody else who loves to do elaborate cooking. I mean, you take comfort in the skills that you have in the face of all this unknown and treacherous territory. I think the bigger thing that probably was helpful to me is that COVID fell upon us less than a month after Brian died. Airports were already closing as I was coming back from Zurich. So very soon after that, my younger daughter and her wife and their little girl were in Brooklyn and everything was closing. They had to work

full time remotely from home. There was no daycare, there was no school, there was no nothing. And I said, come on up. So they came up. And I would not have known that that would be a great thing for me. But that was the great thing writing the book. You know, I had things to say, and I certainly had lots of material. And it turns out, as we were talking about, you can cry and type at the same time. But the thing that helped me in some sense find a way to live with the grief was

actually being so connected with life. It's it's such an interesting the people asked me when I wrote a book of the book about my mother when she died, and I wrote the book because I had written a you know, I bought the spot in the New York Times for an obituary. I wrote my little bit and they called me and said, we really want to feature this, and I said, well, I didn't write a feature. I just wrote the o bit and I paid my fifteen hundred dollars just as they said, oh no, no, we don't

want you to pay. And I said, that's okay, I've paid, thank you very much. Just print what I wrote. And they said, well, can we you know, I said stop, I'm not giving an interview. I'm not giving up. This is not what that is. And they said, well, can we just ask you a question? Was she you know, did she live anywhere else that other than New York and New Jersey? And then does she survived by a brother or something like that? And they were innocuous questions

that were clearly just filler. That Sunday on the cover was a scathing article about my mother and they never even printed my operture. And I was so gob snapped. I was. I remember sitting on the stairs reading the Sunday Times and just thinking, I've got to write a book. Yeah, I have to write a book. I have to write the book. That's what I have to do. I have to get ahead of it, you know. And it was a very interesting sort of the process that you get

to sit with it. It's at least your own process. Well, I hope it was useful to people. That was Brian's wish, that was my wish. You know, I didn't want to enter into the end of life debate. But when you have these terrible losses, which we all do, I think you have to sit with it and you have to sort of make your peace with the loss. You know, it's a lonely enterprise to go through something like this. So to be able to expand that to help other people who might not have the have the story at

their fingertips and might not understand it. It is a gift to other people. And it really it's spurred conversation, uncomfortable conversation between me and my husband. So this is so in love as your ninth book. Is that correct, It's got to be around there somewhere. Yeah, Eli's count after I guess, well, well, you know, on one hand, there are so many people who are so much more

prolific than I am. I don't want to be like yay ten people, because then I look at Joyce Carol Oates and you just want to fling yourself out a window and go like the woman has lit early lost count and and most of them are very good. On the other hand, you know, it's more than I expected. I feel like I used to say about writing I wanted the gene Hackman career. I just wanted to keep working. I think I've I think I have that career. I think I think every time a Doris slammed in my face,

I'm like, Okay, there's got to be another building around here. No, no, me too, I'm like, you know, I didn't stop looking at bartender ads until I was in my mid forties and I had already published work. I was like, you know, you just got you just gotta keep going. And it's it is not, as far as I'm concerned, the worst attitude and if part of the answer to the question now, what is you keep going exactly? You do it in your own messy, adult, struggling, limping way. That was the

insightful Amy Bloom. If you need a good readdo yourself a favor and pick up a copy of her beautiful new book In Love, a Memoir of love and loss. As always, thank you for listening. Now, What with Brookshields is a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters and abou Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by Bahed Fraser