They keep dying on us. Cousins, friends, neighbors — people we’ve known for years.
Also dying are people who have breezed into our lives and out of them again — people who have stayed long enough for a single chapter and moved on. For me, such a person would be my glamorous boss from the days I spent at Look magazine in the 1960s — Betty Rollin, journalist, author and newscaster. She died on Nov. 7.
Also among the missing this past year or two are individuals who have populated our lives from afar — wielding power or providing inspiration, a catchy tune, or something to read.
We Knew Them From Afar
- Henry Kissinger. Secretary of State under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford who called Daniel Ellsberg “the most dangerous man in America.” He died yesterday at the age of 100.
- Daniel Ellsberg. He leaked the Pentagon Papers and won my journalist husband Jon’s lifelong admiration.
- Dianne Feinstein. US Senator, who ran against my father-in-law for mayor of San Francisco in 1971, the year I met Jon. They both lost.
- Harry Belafonte. He charmed the socks off of me and my high school girlfriends with his banana boat song, “Day-O!”
- Queen Elizabeth II. She wore the crown that inspired “The Crown,” the TV series made of equal parts fact, fiction and sober assessment of the human condition.
- Cormac McCarthy. Pulitzer prize winner and author of the dark, post-apocalyptic novel, “The Road,” which I have read — and “Blood Meridian,” which I haven’t yet had the nerve to read.
- Mikhail Gorbachev. He played a leading role in the break-up of the Soviet Union, which Vladimir Putin has since described as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”
- Rosalynn Carter. First lady. Married to the same man for 77 years.
Betty Rollin: A Light Has Gone Out
I wrote about Betty Rollin not so long ago, after she published an op ed in the New York Times about her life as a widow. You can find that story at “Betty Rollin on How to Talk to a Widow”
And now we learn that Betty has taken her own life, at Pegasos, an assisted dying service in Switzerland. The New York Times reports that Betty had been ill, experiencing pain and was grieving her husband’s death in 2020.
Betty was not a newcomer to assisted suicide. Her best-selling memoir, “Last Wish,” is an account of her role in the suicide of her mother, who was suffering with cancer and wanted Betty’s help in ending her life. Standing by as her mother died was risky. Betty could have been charged with a crime.
But in “Last Wish” the love between the two women was palpable. Betty did what her mother needed. And now I have to wonder — in making that one-way trip to Switzerland, was Betty keeping faith with her mother?
