In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss(6)
(Short version: When we do get to Zurich, the windows are nice. The Fraumünster Church offered the commission to Chagall in the Seventies, when he was eighty years old. He finished the five windows in three years: Jacob wrestling with the Angel. The End of Days—angel with trumpet. Giant Crucifixion scene. I love Chagall and these bored me to fucking tears. Brian looked and looked, checking out the paint colors, the lines, and the soldering, and then we both turned away in the shadowy sacristy. We didn’t care and we weren’t moved. We had a better time in the tea shop afterward, eating exceptional, perfect cakes of red velvet topped with wobbling red gelatin and, on top of that, thin chocolate domes like bonnets. That, we could get behind. Fifteen minutes for the windows, one hour for the pastries.)
July 2019
The Blue Notebooks I’m hoping the neurologist we’ve made the appointment with will have an explanation for the past few years of things that Brian’s done that have puzzled me or hurt me and constantly worried me: After complaining about his phone and the calendar on the phone, Brian has started carrying a six-page paper calendar all over the house, from room to room, as my grandmother used to carry her ancient plastic handbag. When I say, We don’t need the calendar, he bristles. When I remind him that we have a large whiteboard calendar in the kitchen for coordinating doctor’s appointments, social engagements, and that, at his request, I’ve filled in a lot of squares with his appointments and mine, he says, I never look at that thing.
When I say, hoping for a fun evening like we used to have (for two working adults, we took in a lot of movies and a lot of popcorn), Let’s go to the movies tonight or tomorrow, he gets up, searches for his paper calendar, and comes back to me, studying it hard, although there’s always a seven o’clock movie at the 12-plex five minutes away and we have neither children at home nor a dog. He brandishes the calendar every time we talk about any coming event, including getting takeout. I see him writing things down, in his new jagged handwriting.
Several years ago, we started keeping a notebook “to help our communication.” I liked the idea more than Brian did but eventually he took to it, using it to let me know that he’d gone for a walk, or we needed toilet paper, or he was out running errands. The notebook also made it easier for him not to use his phone, and he liked that a lot. The notebooks had begun, when we first married, with my leaving a scrap of paper on the kitchen counter, anchored by a saltshaker. It might say: Your mother called or Dinner with So-and-So Saturday night. Brian found this unsatisfactory—probably slipshod, certainly unserious—and so he asked for a notebook. A few years ago, each notebook began to have very specific things wrong with it: too big, too small, the days not dated, the hours not noted. I made every single change (not always nicely) and eventually we settled on a series of navy-blue spiral notebooks and I learned to put the day and the date at the top of every page, in large letters. I learned to list things separately and clearly and I learned that being clever or cute (drawings, stickers, questions) was not only a waste of time but annoying to him. 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.
Monday, January 27, 2020, Zurich
My tone in correspondence with Dignitas was always restrained pleading, plus a little humor, to show that we would not be difficult, and a thread of please-note-my-very-Swiss-attention-to-detail. I have become as English as possible (you cannot have Jewish geshrei-ing and Italian agitarsi with the Swiss German, is what I believe). Every email I send them has either the words quite or a bit or perhaps and usually all three. I want to demonstrate patience, clarity, and some sort of appealing and demure stoicism.
We are a bit concerned that since our contact person is not in the office this week, we will receive no information about planning until after January 6.
That does feel to us like a long time before we can even begin to plan.
When you write that our contact person “will be in touch as soon as possible,” what is that time frame, please?
Thank you for all of your help.
Brian Ameche and Amy Bloom
Von: Amy Bloom
Gesendet: Dienstag, 17. Dezember 2019 15:44
An: Dignitas Betreff: Birth certificate received
Dear Mrs. Bloom, Dear Mr. Ameche,
Your contact person will get back to you as soon as possible, latest after our holidays on 06 January 2020.
Your sincerely, Team DIGNITAS
DIGNITAS
Menschenwürdig leben Menschenwürdig sterben
Monday Evening, January 27, 2020, Zurich
I hope to be patient, stoic, and demure with Dr. G., when he comes to our hotel. He’s phoned me twice and moved our interview twice and we are now, oddly, settled on Monday at 10 P.M. The late hour makes it seem shadier and more important. I worry that Dr. G. will stop at the front desk and they will see that he’s here to interview Brian, to give him the medical green light for his appointment on Thursday—and someone, some well-meaning, life-affirming bellhop or night manager, will stop us. I wonder if I should loiter in the lobby to keep this from happening. Brian says I should do nothing of the kind. I try to figure out what kind of answers Brian will need to give Dr. G. and how I should behave. I put on my black shirt and my black cardigan and look in the mirror. The Swiss seem quite conservative, so this might be the right note to strike. I want to demonstrate support, of the right kind, whatever that may be. Fortunately, I didn’t marry for money, and no matter how hard the Swiss authorities dig, it will be clear that I do not have “a financial interest or benefit” for marrying Brian or for supporting his ending his life. Do they look for signs of true brokenheartedness and not just mere resignation? This “evidence of financial interest or benefit” is, as it turns out, the loophole on which all of Dignitas’s services depend. Swiss law says, explicitly, that it is illegal to assist or encourage a suicide if you have a clear financial interest; the law says “selfish interests,” which seem to me to cover more than cash in the event of the person’s death. However, if you do not, you can assist someone in ending their life—and that’s how Dignitas has done it for three thousand people, so far.