In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss

“I kept crying because I loved him and his appetites and all the sensuality and good humor and heat-seeking that went with them.”

Bloom begins to grieve Brian even before he dies, partly because of the changes Alzheimer’s brings, but also because she has been anticipating Brian’s death ever since she and Brian began working with Dignitas. Her inability to quash her emotions in this scene illustrates her profound love for Brian and her deep sorrow over losing him.

“Basically, I just won’t deal with it, with ‘after.’”

Throughout Bloom and Brian’s time in Zurich, Bloom imagines her trip back to the US without her husband despite attempting to stave off these imaginings. Because Bloom’s future is defined by Brian’s absence, she fears meditating upon it. This suggests that Bloom is still in a state of denial even as Brian’s death approaches.

“It’s raining but couples are strolling into bars and the big, old-fashioned tea shop on the corner. We might have come for a holiday. I guess.”

Because Bloom and Brian have always enjoyed traveling together, Bloom compares their Zurich trip to other trips they’ve taken. She attempts to rearrange the present as a way to defy the future, but her final sentence—“I guess”—implies that she recognizes the futility of her efforts.

“I don’t want to end my life, he said, but I’d rather end it while I am still myself, rather than become less and less of a person.”

After Bloom and Brian begin working with Dignitas, Brian must articulate his reasons for pursuing assisted suicide. When he explains his wishes to Bloom and his Dignitas representative, Bloom is better able to understand what Brian wants and why. In turn, she adopts Brian’s desires and helps him to fulfill them. She too wants Brian to die as himself and on his own terms. The fear of not doing so—of “dying” as a person long before one’s physical death—is central to The Personal and Emotional Impact of Alzheimer’s.

“We went through dozens of those navy-blue notebooks, and by the time we went to Zurich, it was one of the few methods of communication that did not fail us regularly. I have them still.”

Bloom and Brian’s communication notebooks symbolize their relationship and love. Throughout their romance and marriage, the notebooks help the couple to connect, converse, and relate. Bloom retains the journals after Brian’s death because they’re a memento of her life with Brian.

“You need to be with a guy who supports how hard you work and who’ll bring you a cup of coffee late at night. I don’t know if I can be that guy, he said, tears in his eyes, but I’d like a shot.”

Bloom’s account toggles between scenes from her past and present lives with Brian. In this scene, Bloom recounts the start of her romance with Brian. The scene captures and conveys the distinct nature of the couple’s connection. Bloom includes such flashbacks to underscore the deep and powerful bond she and Brian have shared throughout time.

“It’s not a big window. I mean, no one knows how long they have, how much time they have, to make this choice.”

Dr. G. interviews Brian before his accompanied suicide to ensure that Brian is making a lucid, voluntary decision. In the interview, Brian reiterates his reasons for choosing accompanied suicide, which prove that he retains much of who he is. His words also address Bloom’s overarching commentary on right-to-die laws in the US and death with dignity worldwide.

“Choosing to die and being able to act independently while terminally ill is a deliberately narrow opening. Many people can’t get through it.”

When Brian tells Bloom that he wants an accompanied suicide, Bloom delves into related research. She soon discovers that although some states have right-to-die laws, choosing one’s own death is almost impossible in America. In this chapter, Bloom adopts a more journalistic tone in order to objectively convey the information she has acquired.

“Why is there a glass between us? Where did it come from? Take it down!”

Brian’s Alzheimer’s impacts Bloom as much as it impacts Brian. In the immediate wake of Brian’s diagnosis, Bloom tries to maintain emotional consistency. However, the more unrecognizable Brian becomes, the more frustrated and trapped Bloom feels. The disease has created a distance between the couple that Bloom is powerless to change, and the more distant she feels from Brian, the less stable her reality feels.

“That steady loss, that steady unraveling, is sometimes paused but never stopped.”

As Brian’s Alzheimer’s progresses, Bloom’s sense of the disease, her husband, and herself begins to change. Bloom is both researching Brian’s condition and fulfilling her caretaking responsibilities while observing alterations in her husband’s and her own behavior—a gradual process of loss that Bloom suggests is characteristic of Alzheimer’s. As a result, Bloom begins to understand how helpless she is. Even her love and knowledge cannot abate the disease’s effects or change her future.

“Brian answers just right and it is one of those moments when the fact that he answers correctly makes me think, Are we doing this too soon? Should we come back in six months?”

Bloom wants to support her husband’s decision to die but doesn’t want to let him go. Therefore, she begins to doubt Brian’s accompanied suicide plan while listening to him and Dr. G. converse. Brian’s lucidity confuses her, and the fact that she can see the old version of Brian reemerging leads her to question the timing of their decision. However, Bloom is also searching for signs of hope because she’s desperate to extend Brian’s life.

“I couldn’t say, but I knew that this man was not the man I’d married, and the change had happened not over fifty years, which would have been very sad but not puzzling, but over three years. And since I still couldn’t say anything about it to anyone, I certainly couldn’t do anything about it.”

Bloom doesn’t want her husband to die, but she also knows Brian isn’t himself any longer. Since his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Brian has grown increasingly unfamiliar to Bloom. Her realization in this passage reiterates the memoir’s themes regarding terminal illness, change, and powerlessness.

“The waves of grief—which I had always thought of as representing a certain ebb and flow of feeling—turn out to be much more like actual waves, the big gray-green waves of the Atlantic Ocean.”

Bloom tries to stay strong for Brian throughout his illness, but she doesn’t disguise her complex emotions. While she and Brian are out celebrating their birthdays, her sorrow and grief overcome her. Instead of tamping down or dismissing these emotions, Bloom gives them expression. Her simile likens her feelings to powerful natural forces and thus captures their expansive and encompassing nature, implying that she cannot help but give them outlet.

“This is my Brian: getting through the MRI steadily, wiggling his toes, occasionally keeping time to the noise, letting me know he’s there. This is exactly who I’m going to lose.”

Bloom details her and Brian’s response to Brian’s diagnosis with humor, tenderness, and vulnerability. These narrative qualities emerge in this scene depicting Brian’s MRI. Bloom is again trying to support and encourage her husband. However, Brian’s fearlessness underscores Bloom’s impending loss. She can see Brian’s true self in this moment and thus begins to mourn her husband anew.

“I say that I think that whatever method he chooses, I would like to be with him. ‘If that’s okay,’ I say, as if this is only a second date and I don’t want to be one of those clingy women who are always pushing to find out the status of the relationship.”

After Bloom and Brian receive Brian’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, the couple begins to plan for Brian’s death. The couple jokes and teases about friends shooting Brian, Bloom murdering Brian, or Brian drowning himself. In this passage, however, the mood becomes more serious and introspective. Bloom is afraid of losing her husband. However, she wants to honor him in death as much as in life. The atmospheric shift echoes Bloom’s state of mind. Her comparison of the situation to the early stages of a relationship is also significant, as it points to how unfamiliar Brian has become to her.

“It will turn out that these two doctors are for me the villains of this story. When I write fiction, there is almost always no villain at all.”

Brian’s neurologist and psychiatrist complicate Bloom and Brian’s work with Dignitas. Because the two doctors have deemed Brian depressed, Bloom and Brian fear that Dignitas will deny Brian’s application. Although Bloom tries to remain affable with Brian’s medical team, these two doctors impede her and her husband’s desires and needs. This passage speaks to Bloom’s experience as an individual and an author. In applying her fiction writing experience to both her life and memoir writing experience, she looks to narrative forms to understand her unprecedented circumstances, only to find that nothing could have prepared her for the reality and how she would respond to it.

“This is not true, that nothing bad will happen, and therefore not comforting to me. It leaves me quite alone with reality, but the way he feels is exactly what I want for him.”

Bloom incorporates Brian’s biographical statement for Dignitas amidst her own first-person account. In doing so, Bloom grants Brian’s voice, perspective, and story legitimacy. Her formal style thus seconds her declaration that she wants what Brian wants. By working with Brian and Dignitas, but also by writing her memoir, she is enacting her promise to support her husband in life and death.

“I know we celebrated them all and I know he was there and I know, for that matter, that I was there, too, thinking, This will probably be the last, and fearing it would not be, that I would fail to help him, fail to help him get to Zurich, to the other side of the river, however we must go.”

The more disoriented and detached Brian becomes after his diagnosis, the more estranged Bloom feels from her own reality. The disease has distorted her husband’s sense of time, space, and truth. As a result, Bloom similarly feels disconnected from her family and their holiday celebrations.

“We’ve heard what we needed to hear, and in the first moment, Brian hugs me hard, because we have accomplished the thing we wanted to accomplish, and done it together, and he loves teamwork.”

Bloom and Brian’s love sustains them throughout their relationship. Although Bloom is afraid of losing Brian, she relies on their connection for strength as Brian’s death approaches. The image of the couple hugging and celebrating their Dignitas approval illustrates their close bond. The couple’s love not only grounds them in the present but ferries them through difficult times.

“I am so relieved. I realized that last night. I was praying about this and praying all night and I realized that what I prayed for was that he would not have to suffer as Joanne does. I’m shocked that I’m so relieved, but I am.”

Bloom and Brian wait to share the details of Brian’s diagnosis, condition, and impending death with their family and friends. They want their loved ones to know the truth but also want to protect them from it. Therefore, they’re surprised when Brian’s mother, Yvonne, supports Brian’s accompanied suicide decision. Her encouragement bolsters the couple’s spirits in anticipation of Brian’s passing.

“You need to take the first date they give you. I’m not saying you can’t overcome the difficulties that will arise if you take a later date, but I do see difficulties.”

Bloom becomes increasingly reliant upon her tarot card reader, Susie Chang, over the course of Brian’s illness. Bloom admits that believing in tarot might seem silly, but the more unpredictable her life becomes, the more comforting tarot feels. In this scene, Susie provides Bloom with insight into her relationship and Brian’s coming death. Her words stabilize and reassure Bloom in spite of Bloom’s doubts and fears.

“He was loyal, imperious, needy, charming, big-hearted, and just about the most selfish, lovable, and foolishly fearless person I had ever known. And then I met Brian and found another.”

Bloom retreats into reminiscence and reflection in the hours preceding Brian’s death. The narrative shifts into a flashback from the start of Bloom and Brian’s relationship in this chapter. The temporal shift captures Bloom’s desire to memorialize her husband. Bloom is locating the essence of her husband’s spirit by comparing him to her former teacher and mentor.

“I take both of his hands and he lets me. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou, I say. I love you so much.”

Bloom depicts Brian’s death with her previously established tenderness and vulnerability. The linguistic distortions in this passage enact Bloom’s emotional state as she says goodbye to her husband. The image of the couple holding and speaking to each other while Brian dies reiterates the memoir’s ideas about the power of love.