In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss

Content Warning: The source text deals with issues including terminal illness, assisted suicide, and mental health deterioration, including references to depression and anxiety.

In Love traces Amy Bloom and Brian Ameche’s work with the Swiss nonprofit organization Dignitas in the wake of Brian’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Brian is in his mid-sixties and doesn’t want to end his life prematurely. However, he tells Bloom and his Dignitas representative, “I’d rather end it while I am still myself, rather than become less and less of a person” (24). His statement captures The Struggle for Autonomy and Dignity in the face of an incurable, progressive disease. Respecting his wishes, Bloom begins to research right-to-die laws and assisted suicide options in the US but soon discovers that the process is intentionally obstructive: “Right to die in America is about as meaningful as the right to eat or the right to decent housing; you’ve got the right, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to get the goods” (115). In the US, she explains, nominal legal progress has been made in this arena. States including California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, Montana, New Jersey, Maine, Hawaii, and Washington allow physician-assisted dying (51). However, these states also obscure and impede the process, erecting legal and bureaucratic walls that discourage the patient from seeking voluntary death.

Therefore, Bloom’s memoir is as much an educational work of nonfiction as it is a poetic ode to her husband. As Bloom teaches herself about the individual’s right to die across the globe, she relays her research to her reader. Her forthright narrative style invites the audience into her story while simultaneously imparting knowledge. The memoir’s subtext is a form of activism, as Bloom and Brian’s story promotes Dignitas’s mission: “Life with dignity, death with dignity” (61).

Concerns about independence are indeed a motivating factor for many who die by assisted suicide—over 90%, according to an Oregon study (“Oregon Death with Dignity Act: 2015 Data Summary.” Oregon Public Health Division, 4 Feb. 2016). Nevertheless, the practice remains controversial, particularly as it relates to those with incurable but not terminal conditions. The psychiatric testimony Bloom and Brian must procure testifies to such anxieties, as the question of whether those with severe mental illness should be able to access assisted suicide has proven especially contentious (though some places, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, do allow it). Dignitas itself has experienced backlash for some of its decisions; though most who seek its services are terminally ill, it has also offered assisted suicide to clients such as a 23-year-old man with paralysis. However, Dignitas’s founder, Ludwig Minelli, has defended its mission, stating his belief that the right to die is essential to individual autonomy, even for those without terminal or progressive conditions (Gentleman, Amelia. “Inside the Dignitas House.” The Guardian, 17 Nov. 2009.