This is fresh air, I am Terry Gross. My guest Amy Bloom has written a new memoir that begins with

going with her husband to Zurich to end his life. Why Zurich? Because even the few states with

right to life laws in the U.S. have such stringent requirements he didn't qualify. He decided,

after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's in his mid-60s, that he wanted to end his life while he was

still himself. Although by the time he actually did it, his Alzheimer's had progressed to the point

where he'd lost a lot of memory and cognition. Bloom and her husband Brian Amici were middle-aged

and in other relationships when they fell in love and then married in 2007. Amici had been an

architect and played football for Yale. His father, Alan Amici, won the Heisman Trophy in 1954

when he played for the Baltimore Cults. Amici succeeded in terminating his life in late January

2020, just weeks before a COVID shot everything down. Amy Bloom is a novelist and short storywriter

who has been a National Book Award finalist, a National Book Critic Circle Award nominee,

and a recipient of a National Magazine Award. She's the Shapiro Silverberg Professor of Creative

Writing at Wesleyan University. Her new memoir, called In Love, is centered around her husband's

diagnosis and her quest to help him end his life in the manner he chose. The book also keeps

flashing back to their life together and how it was changed by Alzheimer's.

Amy Bloom, welcome to Fresh Air. This is a very moving book beautifully written. I really love it.

Thank you very much for coming. Well, thank you for having me. And I hope you're well.

I am. It's a complicated time, but I do feel okay. I am glad to hear that. I want to start with a

reading that I think will answer a lot of listeners' questions. And it's about the loop that was

in your mind about helping your husband end his life. Yes. I worry sometimes that a better wife,

certainly a different wife, would have said no, would have insisted on keeping her husband in this

world until his body gave out. It seems to me that I'm doing the right thing and supporting Brian

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