779: Ends of the Earth
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A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbearped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Hi everybody, it's American Life. So one of our producers read this book a few months ago, and she was like, "This story is really unusual," and also happened to be written in a way that's perfect for radio. Could we maybe just condense it down and run it on the show? And so a few of us read the book, including me, and we agreed, "This is a story you really don't hear." Basically, the story, there's this couple. He gets Alzheimer's, and of course, so many of us know people with Alzheimer's. I feel like it's like watching somebody who you love just drift slowly off into space, the things that make them them get taken away one after another. And in this couple, the man, while I still had his wits about him, wanted some kind of assisted suicide before it got too late. And so his wife looks around and finds this place in Switzerland to go to. And what makes the book so special is that just, I don't know, the dailyness and realness of the way that his wife tells what that was like to go through. And there's this interesting couple that you get to know, very specific people going through this thing that, honestly, for everybody I have known with dementia or Alzheimer's, I have never met anybody who made this particular choice, and you get to hear how that plays out. It's very life-size. You see this couple after they realize he has Alzheimer's, but also you see them before when he's just kind of acting oddly and it's a little annoying, but she doesn't know why just yet. And so what we're going to do today, the first part of today's show, is that story. And then after the break, it gets later, we have another wife and mother. This one, professional comedian, trying to do the best for her family, from W.B. Easy Chicago, I'm at her class, and let's just get to it. So you may know this book that we're accepting, it got some attention. It's by Amy Bloom, who's written novels and short stories over the years. So this story is true and it's her own story. It's called In Love, the book. And it just says before we start, the story is about somebody who's making the very difficult decision to end their life because of a progressive terminal disease, which of course is very different from somebody thinking about suicide as part of a mental health crisis. But if you are having thoughts of suicide, take all them to account before listening any further. Okay, we are at Act One, exit strategy. Here's Amy Bloom. Sunday, January 26, 2020, JFK International Airport. This trip to Zurich is a new, not quite normal version of something Brian and I love, traveling. As we usually do, we take a car service to the airport so we can be fancy, and also avoid the park and schlep. And even before Brian had Alzheimer's, our combined lack of direction adds 20 minutes to all transportation transitions. We have a restaurant meal before our 6 p.m. departure. I buy a stick of lipstick and a small tube of hand cream. Brian buys some candy, we share gum, we share a bottle of water. We are smiling from the moment we board.
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