When Her Husband Said He Wanted to Die, Amy Bloom Listened
Bloom recalls being in the “Swissair pods” in business class on the flight with her husband and toasting their glasses. Bloom recalls toasting “Here’s to you” instead of their usual “Cent’anni,” which means “May we have a hundred years.”
In Bloom’s first memoir, “In Love,” which Random House will publish on March 8, Bloom writes, “[t]here is no ‘Cent’anni’ for us; we won’t make it to our 13th wedding anniversary.”
Bloom and Ameche were not headed to Switzerland to celebrate. Instead, the couple headed to Dignitas, “a nonprofit organization in the suburbs of Zurich, where Ameche, 66, would legally, peacefully and painlessly end his own life.”
According to Bloom, Ameche, the accomplished architect and former Yale football player, had received a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in 2019, and did not wish for a “long goodbye.” Bloom recalls Ameche stating, “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”
See Elisabeth Egan, When Her Husband Said He Wanted to Die, Amy Bloom Listened
, N.Y. Times, February 27, 2022.
Special thanks to Lewis Saret (Attorney, Washington, D.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.