The solipsistic end of Hunter S. Thompson is detailed here. Forget the verbal bouquets about the stoic writer embracing his destiny. Thompson shot himself in the midst of a quarrel with his wife.
He was a selfish man, funny from a distance, but miserably self-absorbed. He died as he lived. In the midst of a marital "tiff," his wife walked out on him. He asked her not to go. She left anyway. He called her at the gym where she had gone. They talked for ten minutes. She says he didn't say goodbye, instead she heard a click. The phone went dead. Club members saw her shaking. Minutes later Thompson's son called to say his father was dead.
His time of death, according to the medical examiner, was within minutes of the call.
A short time later Thompson's wife and a select group of friends gathered around the kitchen table where he'd shot himself (and still lay) drinking Chivas Regal in his memory.
All this from an article in today's Rocky Mountain News.
The article quotes Thompson's wife:
"It was very loving. It was not a panic, or ugly, or freaky... It was just like Hunter wanted. He was in control here."
Anita Thompson also echoes the comments that have been made by Hunter Thompson's son and daughter-in-law: That her husband's suicide did not come from the bottom of the well, but was a gesture of strength and ultimate control made as his life was at a high-water mark.
If only the Schiavo family had the "strength" of the Thompsons and their friends. What pain the world would be spared.
