A man who was sentenced to six months in prison for assisting in the suicide of his wife shares his personal diary, in which he agonizes over his decision to aid his wife, who was suffering from multiple sclerosis."
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
In 1995, the case of Myrna Delury created a media blitz and much discussion and debate. George Delury says he wrote this book to vindicate Myrna, his wife, and protect others in similar situations against "the sentimental, the self-righteous, and the fearful." Myrna endured multiple sclerosis for years before her husband "murdered" her. Early in their marriage, she asked him if he would help her die when she felt life was no longer worth living, and eventually he did, although her case did not meet the major requirements for assisted suicide. George was arrested, but the district attorney plea-bargained, and George served four months of a six-month sentence. Much of his account concentrates on his and Myrna's changing relationship as she lost one function after another. He portrays her as thoroughly human throughout their final journey, and he notes highlights such as a wonderful home aide and bad patches such as misdirected rehab efforts and unthinking or cruel family members. He gives us much to ponder. William Beatty
From Kirkus Reviews
The grim memoir of a querulous husband anxious to explain his role in his wife's suicide. On July 4, 1995, Manhattan editor Delury prepared and administered to his wife, Myrna, a lethal solution and then, when she continued to breathe, suffocated her with a plastic bag. After summoning the police, he gave them his diary of the last four difficult months of their life together. This book, written while Delury was serving a brief sentence for manslaughter, quotes liberally from that diary. It also covers their courtship, the early, good years of their marriage, and the later, ``ragged'' years. Complexities and ambiguities abound. Myrna was neither terminally ill nor in physical pain. Badly crippled by multiple sclerosis, she had talked of suicide and had asked her husband for assurance that he would help when the time came. When the disease began to affect her mind and her moods, an exhausted Delury told her that she must act soon if she wanted his help. Both, he says, could forsee only a future of pointless misery and wanted to avoid it. Delury includes excerpts from the couple's letters, among them a note in which he tells Myrna: ``You are sucking my life out of me like a vampire and nobody cares.'' That, plus the suicide note he wrote for her to sign, indicated to some that he was pressuring her to end her life. Delury makes no claim to purity of motive, stating, ``I wanted her to escape the horror, and I wanted to escape it, too.'' While he says in his introduction that his purpose in writing is to vindicate his wife's decision to die, he seems equally bent on justifying his own actions and venting his anger at relatives whose support he felt was inadequate. Gives an uncomfortably human face to the debate over assisted suicide, and while arguing for its legalization, unwittingly provides ammunition for both sides. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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