Leon Neyfakh
Leon Neyfakh is the host of Fiasco, the co-host of Think Twice: Michael Jackson and Backfired: Attention Deficit, and the co-creator, along with executive producer Andrew Parsons, of Slow Burn.…
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“I wrestle with: Was it courage, or was it cowardice?”
This question animates a memorial service for Michael and Petra, held several months after their death. Alice and Leon want to understand it as well: Was Michael and Petra’s suicide a move toward something, or away from something else? To figure it out, they reach out to Michael and Petra’s families, to find out what examples they had from their own parents’ end-of-life experiences that might have led them to this choice.
Pushkin.
00:11
Speaker 2
Previously on Death of an Artist.
00:18
Speaker 3
I would have gone to great lengths had I known. Had I known.
00:22
Speaker 4
What would you have done? Yeah, what would you have done? How would you have come to that?
00:26
Speaker 2
What would you have said?
00:27
Speaker 5
Yeah.
00:28
Speaker 1
I would have screamed.
00:30
Speaker 2
I would have shouted. I would have cried out. I would have protested.
00:34
Speaker 1
I would have given.
00:36
Speaker 6
a million reasons to not leave this world.
00:40
Speaker 5
Maybe they knew that.
00:42
Speaker 2
I think they did.
00:43
Speaker 1
I think they must have.
00:45
Speaker 3
Why didn't they tell us?
00:47
Speaker 7
Why didn't they tell us?
00:53
Speaker 3
Check, check, check, check, check, check, check.
01:06
Speaker 1
If you project, Bill.
01:08
Speaker 5
Okay.
01:09
Speaker 2
Check, check, check.
01:11
Speaker 7
So the summer after they died, about six months after they died, we went to Michael and Petra's memorial.
01:18
Speaker 1
Where was it?
01:19
Speaker 3
It was in Rhode Island, just outside of Newport.
01:22
Speaker 2
One of his college friends has a vineyard.
01:26
Speaker 7
The event itself was kind of in, I don't know what you call it, a room where you make wine. A lot of galvanized steel gizmos.
01:36
Speaker 8
And how many people were there?
01:37
Speaker 2
It was like 20 or 30.
01:38
Speaker 7
It was very Michael-centric, I would say, because it was mostly his.
01:41
Speaker 2
High school friends.
01:42
Speaker 3
Bertie was there, his high school sweetheart.
01:45
Speaker 2
College friends. His family, his sisters Ursula and Myra were there. His brother Bill.
01:51
Speaker 7
Who's since passed away.
01:53
Speaker 2
And.
01:56
Speaker 2
It was really like people comparing notes, literally.
01:59
Speaker 3
Yeah, literally.
02:01
Speaker 1
Who got letters? Who got a letter?
02:05
Speaker 2
You got a card?
02:10
Speaker 1
Okay.
02:12
Speaker 2
For me, it just like drove home the fact that the suicide and the letters in particular had created this like informal fraternity of people who are mourning them.
02:24
Speaker 7
I mean, it's a very odd thing to have in common with a bunch of people.
02:28
Speaker 5
Yeah.
02:29
Speaker 7
Being the recipients of a suicide note.
02:31
Speaker 2
So take a look at this. Uh, This is a Harvard reunion in 2018.
02:38
Speaker 1
And we spent about three days together, dancing, having fun, having lunches.
02:43
Speaker 2
And Mike said he did not want to grow old.
02:46
Speaker 7
There was a real sense of decorum, I'd say, at the beginning. It felt like a kind of classic, normal memorial.
02:53
Speaker 2
And Mike was this extraordinary guy who got you to do things that you never in your right mind ever would have done otherwise. There's quite a lot of discussion of Michael's photography and some discussion of Petra's work. Petra did a wonderful series of books about Lottie the chicken and her friend Herbie. But mostly it was people sharing these kind of gauzy memories and talking about Michael in particular as this amazing athlete, as this rebel.
03:24
Speaker 7
And then someone said something about, that sort of opened the floodgates and gave permission for everyone to start sharing kind of their more complicated feelings. It was a real before and after moment.
03:38
Speaker 2
They, like, changed the temperature in the room.
03:40
Speaker 9
And the letters that they sent out were, I thought, deceptive and cutesy.
03:48
Speaker 2
And didn't explain anything about their intent.
03:51
Speaker 1
Yeah.
03:52
Speaker 2
To leave people in the lurch, you know, where you think you've got some time.
03:58
Speaker 1
It was selfish. Very selfish.
04:02
Speaker 7
I think also the fact that so many of these people were friends of his from high school and college meant that they were the exact same age as him. So it was like a sort of a referendum on their own lives is what it seemed like to me. Like if these people felt that they were too old or that this was an appropriate time to go, what did it say?
04:16
Speaker 2
What did it say about them?
04:17
Speaker 7
It wasn't spoken, but that was the sense I got for sure.
04:19
Speaker 2
I definitely felt that. How did you feel after?
04:22
Speaker 7
Well, we kind of argued a bit in the car on the way home, if I recall.
04:26
Speaker 1
Right.
04:28
Speaker 2
My feeling was we had been witness to a conversation that demonstrated how wrong this decision was.
04:39
Speaker 7
And yet.
04:41
Speaker 2
You felt quite, you felt differently than I did.
04:43
Speaker 7
Yeah, I find the decision quite rational, like coldly rational in a way that I don't think I could do it myself probably, but I admire it and respect it and.
04:52
Speaker 3
Think it's maybe correct.
04:54
Speaker 1
Alice, why do you think it's rational?
04:56
Speaker 7
At a certain point, I think the good parts that you're hoping to preserve are not.
05:02
Speaker 3
As good as the bad parts that you're trying to avoid are bad.
05:06
Speaker 2
Whereas I just feel like any shred of possibility that you can keep enjoying your life is worth the risk that you won't.
05:18
Speaker 1
Right.
05:19
Speaker 7
Well, you're someone who will always try to stay until the end of a party.
05:23
Speaker 1
If possible.
05:25
Speaker 2
I am often the last one to go. It's true.
05:27
Speaker 9
I'm the first one to leave.
05:31
Speaker 1
The idea that they could just leave you high and dry.
05:35
Speaker 5
So you would have suffered.
05:37
Speaker 1
I died.
05:38
Speaker 2
Just think of the fact that he could just do what he wanted. I wrestle, was it courage or was it cowardice? Oh, you know, I don't think it was cowardice.
05:52
Speaker 4
No.
05:52
Speaker 10
Except they were afraid of what the future was.
06:17
Speaker 2
Hello, Myra.
06:18
Speaker 5
Hi, Myra.
06:18
Speaker 1
Hello.
06:19
Speaker 4
How are you?
06:20
Speaker 1
Good.
06:20
Speaker 5
How are you? Thanks for doing this.
06:22
Speaker 3
You're welcome.
06:23
Speaker 5
We were trying to figure out how long it had been since we met you at the memorial in Rhode Island.
06:29
Speaker 2
Have you thought back on that very much? Did it mean something to you to be there?
06:33
Speaker 6
No, very much so. I enjoyed it immensely. It was nice to see a lot of people I haven't seen in years.
06:42
Speaker 2
When was the last time so many of the members of the family were together?
06:49
Speaker 6
Probably a Thanksgiving when my parents were still alive. That was always a big, big event. Yeah, a lot of fun. I'm not much of a conversationalist, so you'll have to excuse me.
07:03
Speaker 2
No, no, you're doing great.
07:08
Speaker 6
Mike and I were very close throughout my whole life. He was always there for me. If you've seen any of the baby pictures, he's usually reaching over or looking at me.
07:19
Speaker 2
He was five years older than you, is that right?
07:23
Speaker 6
Oh, now you're going to ask me questions like that?
07:24
Speaker 10
No, no, no.
07:25
Speaker 2
You can say roughly, that's all.
07:28
Speaker 6
At least. He was redheaded and burned badly in the summer. He was always sort of a little bit of a trickster. Everybody loved that quirky little smile he had. It was wonderful. He was fun. He was unusual. We used to go to my grandmother's, and she had donkeys, and he'd get up and ride one. Of course, they don't like to be ridden. He always pushed the envelope a little bit.
08:10
Speaker 2
How did you find out that Mike and Petra had died?
08:15
Speaker 6
Well, I got a clue from their last Christmas card. You must have seen all those.
08:22
Speaker 2
I don't think we've seen them all. We've seen a few.
08:24
Speaker 6
Oh, they're very, very special. Something meaningful in each one.
08:30
Speaker 2
Yeah, we've seen a few that they shared at the memorial.
08:33
Speaker 1
Oh, okay.
08:34
Speaker 6
I don't know if they showed the last one, but I was not surprised.
08:39
Speaker 2
Do you have any memory of what it was about the card that gave you that feeling?
08:45
Speaker 6
I could get it and tell you exactly what it looks like.
08:48
Speaker 3
Yeah, would you?
08:48
Speaker 6
Would you mind?
08:49
Speaker 1
I'd love that.
08:49
Speaker 2
That would be great.
08:56
Speaker 1
My memory is really.
08:59
Speaker 4
Bad.
09:01
Speaker 1
Bob?
09:01
Speaker 6
Where's the Christmas book?
09:03
Speaker 4
All the cards.
09:04
Speaker 2
That I saved for Christmas.
09:09
Speaker 1
I found it.
09:09
Speaker 9
You found it?
09:13
Speaker 3
Sorry about that.
09:14
Speaker 6
I found it.
09:15
Speaker 5
That's way quicker than I would find a Christmas card.
09:18
Speaker 9
Okay.
09:19
Speaker 6
It's a.
09:21
Speaker 6
It's the ocean... And this is a canoe with urns in it, one larger and one smaller. And it says, navigate the perils of 24. That'd give it away. I imagine he sent that out to everybody, so everybody got a clue.
09:45
Speaker 2
Did he have a kind of dark sense of humor?
09:48
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah.
09:50
Speaker 6
Don't we all?
09:52
Speaker 2
Not everybody.
09:53
Speaker 1
No.
09:57
Speaker 2
Would you mind just going through your, just giving us a list of your siblings in order of age?
10:06
Speaker 6
Bill, Mike, John, me, Ursula. That's pretty much it.
10:20
Speaker 4
Trust that you know that there were six children not five Bill born in 1943 Michael John Myra me and Ann born in 1965 and Ann's existence um we weren't allowed to discuss she was whisked away at the age of five days I was seven I was told that she had died in childbirth.
10:48
Speaker 5
Wow And what was her, what's her diagnosis?
10:51
Speaker 1
What, what, five days old? Down syndrome. She had Down syndrome, okay.
10:55
Speaker 4
Yeah, Down syndrome. She also had a congenital heart problem of some sort. My name is Ursula Mathers-Nertz, and I am Michael Mathers' younger sister by a significant amount.
11:14
Speaker 5
Did you call him Mike or Michael?
11:17
Speaker 1
Well.
11:18
Speaker 4
I grew up calling him Mike for decades, and then all of a sudden he decided that he was Michael. So, yeah, we called him Michael. I always had to think before I said it, but yeah. I liked Mike better.
11:34
Speaker 3
What was the difference between Michael and Mike?
11:37
Speaker 4
As Mike, I felt that he was more playful, I guess. And as Michael, he was even more formal than he was before. Let's just say that we he I don't think he liked me. He was very critical. And I don't I don't take criticism. Well, I've discovered.
12:00
Speaker 5
You see, did you grow up believing that you had a dead sibling?
12:07
Speaker 1
For a while. Yeah.
12:10
Speaker 4
I was treated as the baby of the family. She didn't exist. My mother never talked about her. But what little she did tell me was that if her regular doctor had been on duty, Anne would not be alive because her regular doctor knew that my mother was terrified of having a Down syndrome child. And my father wanted the family to look perfect. And you can't have a disabled child in a perfect family. This was a long time ago, mind you. It wasn't as acceptable to have Down syndrome child in your family. In 2001, my brother John forced our father to let us go meet her. He asked all the siblings, okay, who wants to be in on this? And Michael said, this is wrong. This is not what mommy and daddy wanted. This is just totally wrong and unacceptable. and was apparently very angry about it. And I said, sure, I'd like to meet her. Our family was not really cut out to be warm and fuzzy and loving, which is exactly how Annie is. She hugs and kisses and is loving and is smiling all the time.
13:32
Speaker 1
And that's not the Mathers. Not really.
13:41
Speaker 4
Lying about how many kids were in the family for decades really was impacting the entire family. I, honest to God, I don't know how my mother did it. I think Daddy forced her to give Annie up. I mean, because, anyway, I spoke to a psychiatrist when my mother was in the throes of her dementia.
14:05
Speaker 1
She was acting out, and he said that.
14:10
Speaker 4
Risk factors for dementia include not having close social contacts, and my mother didn't have any close girlfriends to whom she could really confide, and having some major emotional trauma. And Annie's existence was about as major of an emotional trauma as you can get, and not being able to talk about it.
14:33
Speaker 1
So I blame that for contributing to her dementia.
14:45
Speaker 5
Myra, do you think that Mike and Petra had a different outlook on aging than you?
14:50
Speaker 6
Oh, no, it's very similar.
14:52
Speaker 2
Where do you think you all got that?
14:55
Speaker 6
Watching the parents go through life that way as they got older. It's not fun to watch. I'm getting the same way, getting very forgetful and Doing silly things. Do you have to have somebody watch you? You know, that sort of thing.
15:19
Speaker 2
You're having memory issues yourself?
15:22
Speaker 5
Yeah.
15:24
Speaker 2
What's that laugh? Like a lot?
15:25
Speaker 1
Yeah.
15:26
Speaker 6
Yeah. It's hitting me hard.
15:32
Speaker 2
I'm sorry to hear that.
15:35
Speaker 5
Can I ask, I hope this doesn't seem too crass, but what does it feel like? I mean, what are the kind of first.
15:43
Speaker 5
Symptoms of your memory declining that you could feel?
15:51
Speaker 6
Well, simple things. You start with, where did I leave that? And then you start looking all over the house for it. Simple things. Forgetting your friend's names. Somebody asks you a question and you You can't even answer it, but then you remember what the answer is a couple of minutes later. It's just a lot of silly little things, but it's very scary.
16:29
Speaker 4
Our brother Bill also had dementia. He was so adamant about not having anybody help him.
16:38
Speaker 1
It was just incredibly frustrating.
16:44
Speaker 4
And so I think he's up there looking down, thinking, see, gotcha, Ursula.
16:50
Speaker 1
I didn't go to assisted living.
16:54
Speaker 5
Will you just explain your parents' end-of-life experiences? Because it seems like it really spooked a bunch of you.
17:01
Speaker 4
My father, he had Alzheimer's. My mother had vascular dementia. My father, being as bright as he was.
17:14
Speaker 4
And just like Bill was exactly the same way, he could fight the dementia really, really well. But when it came to things like writing checks, it took him 40 minutes. So he was fighting it, and I think he suspected it, but he didn't want anybody else to know that he was failing. And my mother had started failing a little more obviously. earlier than he did. Socially, she was fine, but short-term memory was very bad. And she was a really good cook, and she did a lot of things without recipes that were just second nature to her.
18:05
Speaker 1
And I would go and visit. She'd say, what can I do to help? What can I do to help? I'd say, well, why don't you make the tuna fish?
18:12
Speaker 4
And then she'd stand there and she had to be told, okay, you open the can, you put the tuna fish in the bowl, you add the mayonnaise, you stir it.
18:21
Speaker 1
She just couldn't put it all together.
18:29
Speaker 4
We ended up putting my father in a nursing home and that made my mother's dementia worse. He had been her rock, her center. And all of a sudden her center was gone and the short-term memory was gone. So you'd have to tell her over and over and over again that daddy was not dead. He was at the nursing home. He was just downtown.
18:54
Speaker 1
And then one day.
18:57
Speaker 4
My mother tried to run away and she had garden shears in her hand and this caregiver tried to get her to come back to the house and she threatened the caregiver with the garden shears.
19:08
Speaker 1
And I said, okay, that's it. That's, we're done.
19:12
Speaker 4
My father insisted that we move a queen size bed into his little tiny apartment at assisted living.
19:21
Speaker 1
And we did.
19:22
Speaker 4
And she came down and I swear to God, she thought that the man in the apartment was her father.
19:33
Speaker 1
He was an old man and she was mentally ill. 17, I think.
19:38
Speaker 4
I think that's where her head went, that she was a teenager again or something, or very, very young. And she didn't know who this old man was, all wrinkled. And he wanted to sleep.
19:50
Speaker 1
With her um can you imagine oh wow yeah no.
19:55
Speaker 5
I mean this is like you're describing like a really I mean I know it's I know this is kind of generically how it goes for so many people but to like hear it in its details it really is just so Baroquely nightmarish.
20:08
Speaker 1
It was awful was so undignified.
20:18
Speaker 4
Assisted living called me and they said, we're going to have to move your mother into the locked dementia unit. She walked down the hall knocking on every single apartment door naked. One time she squeezed the hell out of one of the assistant's arms. Another time she thought that there was a woman in her bed, but it wasn't her room. So she pulled the woman out of the bed and onto the floor and the woman's hip broke. So my mother was admitted to the psych unit. While she was there, the assisted living said, you can't send her back here. So we found another place. And she did something there also semi-violent. So they sent her back to the acute psych unit. She went to the acute psych unit four times and she was in three different nursing home settings. She told me over the years, I don't ever want to go to a nursing home ever, ever, ever. And here she was in the worst setting possible. And daddy died in the summer of 2010. And my mother died February 29th of 2012.
21:19
Speaker 5
And did she know that he had died or was it?
21:27
Speaker 4
Not really.
21:27
Speaker 1
Yeah.
21:31
Speaker 4
Did you know about how Petra's parents died?
21:37
Speaker 1
No. I am Gero Gerwig.
22:20
Speaker 10
I am Petra's brother, Petra's half-brother. But I don't really feel like a half-brother.
22:25
Speaker 1
I am.
22:29
Speaker 9
Liane Gerwig, Petra's sister-in-law. I think about her every day.
22:40
Speaker 10
My wife had a very intimate relationship with Petra. They were like chicks, as we say in German, the way they would sit together.
22:50
Speaker 9
We had a wonderful relationship. In the last years, I called Petra on the phone once a month, and we would talk for almost an hour.
23:01
Speaker 5
What sort of things did you two talk about?
23:04
Speaker 8
Personal things.
23:07
Speaker 9
My relationship with Gero, whether we were getting along, When there was something on our minds, we really vented. We also talked about things that upset us, that we didn't like. We told each other things, things I might never tell my husband.
23:28
Speaker 5
We know so little about Petra's childhood. What we know mostly comes from her book, Kisses from Rosa, about the little girl Rosa who goes to live with an aunt in the Black Forest when her mother dies. goes to get treatment for tuberculosis.
23:53
Speaker 10
So I only really know one thing, which is that my mother was sick and went to the Black Forest to recover.
23:59
Speaker 9
She had a lung illness. Petra's father died and her mother was often sick. She was often in group homes because her mother was in a sanatorium and her father was dead. Then came Mr. Tolenz.
24:12
Speaker 10
He was also there at the sanatorium.
24:14
Speaker 9
He was the third husband.
24:16
Speaker 10
Who also adopted Petra. And then Petra was always with them.
24:25
Speaker 2
You shared your mother, right? It was your mother that you had in common, Gero?
24:34
Speaker 10
Yes, we have the same mother, yes. But I was never with her when I was a child.
24:39
Speaker 9
There was a really nasty divorce fight. And in the Nazi period, when parents separated, the kids were given to the father. That was the law.
24:49
Speaker 10
Petra's father is the second man that my mother married. The first time she was married to my father. It is a family in which all my father, Petra's mother, all married three times.
25:01
Speaker 9
And Petra too.
25:02
Speaker 10
And Petra too.
25:03
Speaker 2
So everyone was married three times.
25:05
Speaker 5
It's like an adult fairy tale, three times, you know.
25:14
Speaker 10
I actually didn't meet Petra for the first time until I was 10 years old.
25:18
Speaker 9
My husband was 10. Petra was 5 years old.
25:21
Speaker 10
Yes, yes, yes, right. She was smaller, younger than I, yeah. But not much, just... Five years. Five years, yes.
25:29
Speaker 4
Fünf Jahre, ja.
25:31
Speaker 2
And what was it like as a 10-year-old boy to meet your sister? What are your memories of those early meetings?
25:40
Speaker 1
Ja, wie gesagt, ich.
25:46
Speaker 10
I can still remember how Petra picked me up that first time from the train with my mother. I took the train there alone, and then we both stood in front of each other and looked at each other and thought, who are you? We knew who the other was, but we needed some time before we got to know each other. It was as it always is when two strangers actually come together. But through playing card games, we got very close. We then met regularly, the way one does in divorced families.
26:24
Speaker 9
As Petra's parents got older, they put themselves in an old-age home, and Gero and Petra's mother joined an organization that provides help with dying. And Petra supported that. When the time came, they did not take the death assistance medication because it was already too late. They were too frail to take the medication themselves anymore. So they just refused to eat. And then after four weeks, they both finally fell asleep. First Petra's adoptive father, and then a day later Petra and Gero's mother.
27:01
Speaker 8
Such thoughts that they could live next to each other, that was already there, through their parents, who also wanted it.
27:13
Speaker 9
So the idea that it was possible to take one's life was there because of their parents. But there was context. They were sick. Her parents were, they were much older. They were over 90 already and they felt now is a good time. We're frail. The mind is also giving in. And they were physically no longer in good shape. But Petra and Michael were still spry, left a full life. They were super healthy. No one expected that.
27:46
Speaker 10
It was like a blow to the head. I never would have thought it was possible.
27:51
Speaker 5
Ursula, when we spoke last time, you mentioned that you're a horrible person to watch movies with.
28:12
Speaker 1
And I wonder if you could explain what you mean and relate it to Mike and Petra.
28:16
Speaker 4
I mean, people in movies where they're shoot-em-ups, they take a bullet to the stomach and they drop completely dead.
28:29
Speaker 1
No, it is so unrealistic.
28:32
Speaker 5
It's like the narrative needs and conventions of movies, like... demand that people die quicker than they actually do, right?
28:40
Speaker 1
You're right.
28:40
Speaker 4
Hollywood needs it to go faster. But there's so much suffering. That's why I don't like to talk about, or think, rather, about how things went down for Mike and Petra at the very end.
28:54
Speaker 1
I am.
28:59
Speaker 4
A retired palliative care physician assistant. And we would deal with patients who have a chronic condition that is ultimately going to be fatal. We help the patients and their families come to terms with this terminal diagnosis and prepare for it mentally, emotionally, and.
29:30
Speaker 1
Logistically.
29:31
Speaker 5
So clearly that experience colored how you think about and thought about the.
29:41
Speaker 4
Way mike and patra took their lives i just when i think about it i think okay so michael is going to help patra die first um and was patra all in on this presumably yes But right up until she was dead, was she all in on this?
30:03
Speaker 1
Did he get the doses right? Did he really know what he was doing?
30:07
Speaker 4
Or did she struggle? Did he put her to sleep first? And then did she thrash because she wasn't getting oxygen? And then did he have to hold her down to keep the gas mask on her? That's what I try not to think about, is those moments of struggle when you're not getting oxygen.
30:30
Speaker 1
And it's terrifying.
30:34
Speaker 2
Did Mike ever seek your advice as an expert in the field of dying?
30:39
Speaker 1
No, not in the field of dying.
30:43
Speaker 4
He did advertise the fact that he was not going to go down like the parents did.
30:50
Speaker 1
And he was....
30:56
Speaker 4
Clear that he had been stockpiling medications. He made it crystal clear that he couldn't imagine living without Petra.
31:08
Speaker 1
Maybe he felt the same way as I do.
31:11
Speaker 4
He didn't want to live in a nursing home, and he felt that that was down the road.
31:16
Speaker 1
I don't know.
31:17
Speaker 4
In my case, why I would never take my own life is because How do you decide when you're going to do that? Mike and Petra both had years of artistic and creative ability ahead of them, and they just shortened that significantly and took it away from the world. I don't have such.
31:38
Speaker 1
Grand abilities, but.
31:41
Speaker 4
By the time my current self thinks it would be appropriate for me to take myself out because I was becoming a burden, by that time, I wouldn't have the ability. I would be too far gone to do it right.
31:58
Speaker 1
And I would just make a mess of it. Right.
32:01
Speaker 3
It's like the ultimate existential riddle.
32:04
Speaker 1
It's not solvable. Yeah.
32:07
Speaker 5
It also makes me think that, you know, what you think makes a good life is the life you're currently living. You can't imagine a life that doesn't consist of those same daily rituals, elements, what have you. And I just find it incredibly bracing to hear the story of Annie, who, you know, from that perspective, is someone who doesn't get to kayak on the Columbia River, doesn't get to have a photography practice, doesn't have what Mike considered makes a life worth living, and yet lives a joyous life.
32:46
Speaker 1
Yes. Yes.
32:47
Speaker 4
Yes, you make a very interesting point. It's not the choice I would have made, but that's, I'm not him. It's his choice, not mine. I just, I keep coming back to, I truly, truly hope that Petra was a thousand percent on board with the plan.
33:08
Speaker 1
Yeah.
33:36
Speaker 8
Petra dreamed that when she was old, she would sit on a bench with her beautiful white hair and she would have at least two, three grandchildren scurrying around her legs.
33:51
Speaker 3
She told you that?
33:52
Speaker 8
She told me that, yes.
33:56
Speaker 9
Petra once said to me that if Michael ever dies, she would come back to Germany. And she was looking forward to a good time with us.
34:05
Speaker 8
Wow. Did she seem.
34:15
Speaker 2
It sounds like she wasn't afraid of getting old then. I think a lot of people have said that that was part of what motivated them, was that they didn't want to get old and sick. But from what you just said, she had quite a romantic vision of what it might be like to get older.
34:33
Speaker 10
Yeah.
34:34
Speaker 1
Yeah.
34:38
Speaker 9
Yes, she was a dreamer, definitely. One day before Michael and Petra's death, Gero wrote him an email for his birthday, and he also answered in, I believe, just three or four words.
34:53
Speaker 3
Yes.
34:55
Speaker 9
And the next day, the letter arrived.
34:58
Speaker 8
Dear Lianchen, dear Gero.
35:10
Speaker 9
Dear Liane, dear Gero, since we've been together, Michael and I have planned a shared departure from Mother Earth. Michael thoroughly researched and pulled together everything that's involved. We already took care of all the practical matters with the animals, the house, and so on, a while ago with the lawyer. Now I'm writing a few letters to the people who mean a lot to us. You are so dear to me. Even with all those decades of distance, we became closer. No day goes by on which I don't at some point think about you. We have our grave in a gorgeous, quiet cemetery close to the ocean, have a stone and are together in a carton. A good friend is also there and her son comes often and is a good friend. almost like a son for us. I write this letter already a few months in advance. It makes me calmer to know that you will receive it and that you believe me that we are without fear and don't believe it is a sin. Now let's all hug the four of us and whether or not we will see each other again in the beyond, we lived and we loved. Your Petra and Michael.
36:42
Speaker 10
We sat in front of the letter and didn't know what to say. We never expected something like that.
36:47
Speaker 9
I was shocked. I was simply shocked.
36:50
Speaker 10
I could never have imagined it. That one might go willingly into death.
36:55
Speaker 9
It makes me angry that she wrote it months in advance. that she had already worked on the plan for months, even though we were in constant contact. And that's why I can also understand Till. It's impossible for him to talk to her now, too. So cowardly. To just go. That is not like her.
37:20
Speaker 10
I only know one thing. Michael was very.
37:23
Speaker 9
Possessive?
37:25
Speaker 10
Possessive of Petra. He really didn't like it when she came to Germany. When I look at that picture of Petra over there, I say to myself, she could still be alive if it weren't for Michael. It sounds somewhat macabre, but the first thing I thought was, he is afraid to lose her. I thought about it. Was it done early so that he could take her with him? and that the end would not suddenly be left alone. She must have really loved him, otherwise you don't accept so much.
38:02
Speaker 2
Sometimes I wonder when I stand in front of Petra's picture, did you go freely? I don't know. I don't know. Myra, what do you make of the fact that some people have a pretty peaceful and harmonious aging process, but the two of them decided it was not worth taking a chance?
38:49
Speaker 1
I agree.
38:49
Speaker 6
I feel the same way. I said I'm not, you know, I don't have the options to do that. I was just going to have to live it out. I would prefer not to.
39:06
Speaker 5
When you say options, do you mean that?
39:09
Speaker 6
Well, like they did.
39:11
Speaker 1
Yeah.
39:11
Speaker 2
Do you think that's a common feeling? I think we don't talk about it very much, that this is something people wish they could do.
39:25
Speaker 6
No, I think a lot of people don't know. You know, they just, just live through it. But, uh, you end up in a hospital somewhere for the rest of, you know, another 10 or 20 years.
39:40
Speaker 1
Yeah.
39:44
Speaker 6
I'm sorry if I'm not giving you enough information.
39:46
Speaker 5
Oh, no, Myra.
39:46
Speaker 4
You're doing great.
39:47
Speaker 2
I mean, I think we're asking hard questions, and I think you're speaking to this from a very specific perspective, which we don't normally get to hear, which is someone kind of reckoning with the exact thing that maybe Mike and Petra were so— Scared of. Scared of, desperate to avoid.
40:07
Speaker 1
Yes.
40:09
Speaker 2
Do you and your husband talk about kind of what's ahead?
40:18
Speaker 6
No, not really. It'll probably be, it puts me somewhere in a home where they, or maybe we'll get somebody here to take care of me. That would, that could be convenient.
40:36
Speaker 2
Going through what you're going through now, what is it about that experience that kind of makes you understand better what why Mike and Petra made this choice.
40:54
Speaker 6
I would like to do that for myself but that's just me because I'm losing my mind so it's scary very scary there is no good way to deal with it unless somebody gives you back your brain.
41:12
Speaker 2
Did you think it was the right choice for them.
41:18
Speaker 10
Yes.
41:44
Speaker 2
Next time on our season finale....
41:47
Speaker 5
How do you feel about the fact that you did not get a letter?
41:51
Speaker 1
Relieved.
41:56
Speaker 8
That's not very nice.
41:58
Speaker 9
No, it was like, oh, I didn't want to be part of that web.
42:02
Speaker 6
It was a web, too, you know.
42:09
Speaker 5
Death of an Artist, Season 3, is reported and produced by.
42:12
Speaker 3
Me, Alice Gregory.
42:14
Speaker 2
And me, Leon Nafok.
42:18
Speaker 5
Our supervising producer and editor is Diane Hodson. Our producer is Sonia Gerwitt. Our showrunner is Alexandra Gerriton. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Original music and sound design by Evan Viola. Our fact checker is Annika Robbins. Additional production support by Julian Collet. And our show art was designed by Sean Carney.
42:40
Speaker 2
This episode featured interviews with Ursula Mathers-Nairt, Myra McNulty, and Leanne Ingaro-Gerwick. with voiceover by Margot Avery and David Carson. Special thanks to Caitlin Riege, Felix Poon, Bill Wilson, and Sam Gerwitt. Death of an Artist is a production of Pushkin Industries. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can hear all episodes of Death of an Artist early and ad-free by subscribing to Pushkin +. Sign up at the show page for Death of an Artist on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. Pushkin Plus subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, and exclusive binges of other narrative podcasts throughout the year.
The Hosts
Alice Gregory
Alice Gregory is a journalist and critic for publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, and n+1. She has…
Katy Hessel
Katy Hessel, host of Death of an Artist: Krasner & Pollock, is an art historian, author, curator and broadcaster. Through her The Great Women Artists Podcast and Instagram account, which foreground women…
Helen Molesworth
Helen Molesworth, host of Death of an Artist Season 1, is a writer and a curator based in Los Angeles. She is the host of David Zwirner’s PROGRAM, a video interview…
