Suicide pacts, a proof of love

Mary Witte knew that she was going to find her friends dead, but it is still a shock to find them dead in their garage  surrounded by helium tanks, tubes and plastic garbage bags.

For more than 10 years Dr. Daniel and Katherine Gute of Milwaukee, both approaching the age of 80 years were planning to commit suicide in the case when one of them got sick and had little chance of recovery or one of them was forced to live in a nursing home. Katherine “Kittie” Gute suffered from polymyalgia rheumatica (PHR) and dementia and her husband, whom she was married to 53 years was getting thinner every day taking care of her. Daniel Gute,the husband, who used to be a community president, sailor and urologist, retired when he was 62 and was a healthy person taking into consideration his age. Kittie was an environmentalist, and loved to play tennis and golf. The deaths that took place on the 18^th of July are just one example of the many suicide pacts that were made by people that loved each other and did not want to spend the rest of their lives in solitude. Experts on the aging process say that couples make the choice to kill themselves for a variety of reasons: illness, economics, isolation, guilt over being a burden, but also as an act of devotion to each other.

Washington D.C. psychologist Doree Lynn says that this is actually an act of love because when a couple has been together for such a long period of time they wonder what will become of them and start thinking about the vow words “until death do us part”. The Gute story is not an isolated case and there have been other suicide cases on the United states territory that have a reason similar to theirs. In July for example, a 81 years old man from Little Rock, Arkansas, which was recovering after cancer, killed his wife, aged 76,and then shot himself. The same month, a couple in their 80s from Sedona, Arizona, were found dead in a Colorado cabin, both shot. The man killed his wife and then committed suicide. The two of them were a member of the Final Exit group, which promotes the right to die with dignity. They left a note for their family saying that a long time ago they decided to be the ones who manage the timing of their own deaths and that they are doing it to avoid the indignities of being stuck in a nursing home or of long hospitalization.

Doree Lynn, a Washington D.C. psychologist and the author of the book “When the Man You Love Is Ill: Doing Your Best for Your Partner Without Losing Yourself” says that suicide among elder patients is usually planned in advance, especially if they are ill or depressed but it ca also be done as an act of love after passing through being married for better or worse for a lifetime. So this is when the idea of them dying together pops up in their mind. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Americans aged 65 or more are more likely to commit suicide than younger people. The percent of elder Americans that commit suicide is quite high: 16 in a hundred. When Mary Witte found her parents dead, near them was a briefcase containing a copy of the book, “To Die Well” together with a DVD by Derek Humphry, founder of the Compassion and Choices. The method they had chosen was described in the book: inhaling helium and putting a plastic bag over the head. He left a letter explaining their decision: Mary’s father saw both his parents die in a nursing home and sworn that he will never do this to himself. They started talking about it two years ago and he discussed it with his three girls, now aged over 40.

Many Americans still blame this method of choosing your destiny and Bill Jose, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology and led a special interest group discussion regarding suicide at the Osher Institute of Learning at the University of Southern Maine in Portland for seniors aged 65 to 80 says that it is a difficult conversation especially for people a religious Christian background because they believe that committing suicide gives you no chance to enter heaven after the death. This is a particular moment when science, religion and morality all come together and he says that if you want to die a good death you will probably have to organize it because science has reached a very high level and can keep you alive long after you stopped wanting that.