The daily Astorian., August 29, 2019, Page 5, Image 5

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THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019
In the face of death, the party of a lifetime
Taking control at the end
By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
SEATTLE — The day he picked to die,
Robert Fuller had the party of a lifetime.
In the morning, he dressed in a blue
Hawaiian shirt and married his partner while
sitting on a couch in their senior housing
apartment. He then took the elevator down
three fl oors to the building’s common room,
decorated with balloons and fl owers.
With an elaborately carved walking
stick, he shuffl ed around to greet dozens of
well-wishers and friends from across the
decades, fellow church parishioners and
social-work volunteers. The crowd spilled
into a sunny courtyard on a beautiful spring
day.
A gospel choir sang. A violinist and
soprano performed “Ave Maria.” A Seat-
tle poet recited an original piece imagining
Fuller as a tree, with birds perched on his
thoughts.
And when the time came, “Uncle Bob”
banged his walking stick on the ceiling to
command attention.
“I’ll be leaving you in a little over an
hour,” he announced.
A sob burst. Fuller turned his head sympa-
thetically toward its source.
“I’m so ready to go,” he said. “I’m tired.”
Later that afternoon, Fuller plunged two
syringes fi lled with a light brown liquid —
a fatal drug combination mixed with Kahlua,
his favorite alcohol — into a feeding tube in
his abdomen. He was one of about 1,200 peo-
ple who have used Washington’s Death with
Dignity Act to end their lives in the decade
since it became law.
As such laws grow more popular — they
have taken or will take effect in Hawaii,
New Jersey and Maine this year, making it
nine states where “aid in dying” is allowed
— more people who are suffering and ter-
minally ill have the option of hastening their
death. Those who do cite a variety of reasons
— fear of losing their autonomy or dignity,
becoming a burden to loved ones, becoming
unable to enjoy life — but they are united in a
desire to take control of their own ends.
For Fuller, the decision to end his life at 75
was, if not easy, never in doubt.
Relationship with death
Death did not frighten Bob Fuller. It had
been with him since he was young.
He grew up in Hooksett, New Hampshire,
the second of four children. His father was a
furniture maker, his mother a homemaker. He
described their relationship as loveless and
Elaine Thompson/AP Photo
End of Life Washington volunteer Stephanie Murray, right, brings the drugs that will end the
life of Robert Fuller to him as he lies in bed in Seattle.
unhappy, but he was close to his ailing grand-
mothers and would frequently sit with them.
When he was 8, he said, his father’s
mother, severely depressed, drowned her-
self in the Merrimack River after leaving her
glasses and slippers on the shore. He recalled
seeing her body in the water, a trauma that
began his long, matter-of-fact relationship
with death.
He called it his “default setting”: “If life
gets painful, you go to the Merrimack River.”
Fuller’s friends described him as playful,
wise, witty and vibrant, a wonderful singer
and the type of person who collected friends
everywhere. He sponsored people in recov-
ery from drug and alcohol addiction after
quitting drinking in 1983. In retirement he
ran a voucher program — now named for
him — through the LGBTQ support organi-
zation Peer Seattle that provided music and
theater tickets to those who couldn’t afford
them.
As a former nurse, he was like an unoffi -
cial assistant manager at his building, helping
residents change bandages or picking them
up when they fell in their kitchens.
But his old default setting persisted
through much of his life, a sort of undercur-
rent to the way he lived “out loud,” as he put
it.
He tried to kill himself in 1975, he said,
when he was drinking too much and despon-
dent after his marriage ended; he had revealed
to his wife he was gay. Fuller had moved to
Seattle for nursing school, and he was work-
ing as a psychiatric nurse at Harborview
Medical Center when he swiped handfuls of
narcotics, went to a nearby park, swallowed
them and lay down to die.
He called for help when it started raining,
he said. He didn’t want to die cold and wet.
In the mid-1980s, Fuller helped care for
friends suffering from AIDS and adminis-
tered a fatal dose of medication to one at the
end of his fi ght, he said. But his own sexual
behavior was so risky it verged on suicidal.
He contracted AIDS, then lived long enough
to benefi t from the AIDS drug mixture when
it was developed in the mid-1990s.
“I think I wanted to get AIDS,” he said.
“All my friends were dying.”
For critics, that sort of fatalism is a key
problem with aid-in-dying laws. Some AIDS
patients who chose to end their lives might
have lived long enough to benefi t from the
AIDS drug mixture as Fuller did, said Wes-
ley J. Smith, an author and prominent critic
of the laws.
Beyond that, to allow people to hasten
their deaths represents an abandonment, a
signal to the terminally ill that their lives are
not worth living, he said.
“We should be very concerned that we are
normalizing suicide in our society, especially
at the very time during which, practically out
of the other side of our mouth, we are saying
suicide is an epidemic,” Smith said.
Whether such deaths do constitute sui-
cide is a semantic debate. In Washington and
other states with aid-in-dying laws, coroners
are forbidden from categorizing the deaths
as suicides; instead, they list natural causes.
Opponents, including the American Medical
Association, maintain that “assisted suicide”
is more accurate.
‘Why should I suffer?’
Fuller had long thought that if he were
ever to become terminally ill, he would want
to control his death. That notion was rein-
forced two years ago, when a woman in his
building used Washington’s law, he said. She
explained the requirements for him, includ-
ing that two doctors must certify you have
less than six months to live, that you must
be competent, and that you must request the
fatal drugs twice verbally and once in writ-
ing, witnessed by two people.
Last summer he went to the doctor with a
sore throat. It turned out to be an aggressive
cancer at the base of his tongue. He began a
round of chemo but abandoned it, saying it
was killing his soul. Instead, early this year,
he picked a date — May 10 — and began
planning.
“Why should I suffer?” he said. “I’m
totally at peace with this.”
In the ensuing months he put his affairs in
order. He went up the Space Needle and took
a road trip down the Pacifi c Coast Highway
with his partner and caretaker of the past few
years, Reese Baxter.
The cancer was closing his throat, mak-
ing it diffi cult to eat, but he had the fl an from
the Mexican restaurant around the corner one
last time.
On Facebook he described his pain, his
falling weight and his fi nal visits with old
friends.
The end
As he hugged friends and sang along at
his party, Fuller appeared serene, betraying
no sign of reconsideration. He also kept his
sense of humor, greeting a reporter by saying:
“I’m dying to read your story.”
“You can fi nd me in God’s eyes. You
can fi nd me in beautiful music,” he told the
crowd. “You can fi nd me in terrible, terrible
farts.”
He invited those who wished to be with
him for his death to come upstairs. Friends
packed into his bedroom. He changed into
satin, navy blue pajamas and lay down in his
bed.
In the kitchen, two volunteers with the
nonprofi t End of Life Washington mixed the
drugs and Kahlua in a glass measuring cup.
They said they considered themselves to be
like midwives, helping usher people out of
the world instead of into it.
“You know if you do this, if you put this in
your system, you’ll go to sleep and you won’t
wake up?” one, Stephanie Murray, told him
as she delivered the syringes.
“I do,” Fuller answered.
Fuller plunged the syringes.
After a few moments of tense quiet, he led
his friends in singing, “I’m so glad we had
this time together,” the sign-off from the old
Carol Burnett television show.
His eyes closed for longer and longer
periods.
“I’m still here,” he said.
And then, he wasn’t.
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