‘O último abraço’ by Vitor Hugo Brandalise

In 2014, 74-year-old Nelson Golla complied with his wife Neusa’s request to die. They had been married for 47 years. Neusa had been transferred to a nursing home by their three children, who could not look after their mother, nor afford to hire nurses to assist her 24/7. This was not the first time Neusa went to a nursing home, and the family had already tried, unsuccessfully, to care for her at home. Nelson became well known at the new clinic, visiting his spouse daily for nine months and witnessing her decline – from strokes, severe depression and, finally, having to be fed through a nasogastric tube. For Nelson, the tube was the last straw, as he could no longer converse with or cook for his wife; still, he would sneak in drops of coconut water for her through a straw, despite the nurses’ assurances that she was sufficiently hydrated. Before Neusa’s tongue started to atrophy, she would repeat to her husband that she wanted to die. Nelson, who had worked in multiple factories, decided to make an explosive device with a PVC pipe, mortars, and a fuse, hoping to end his own life and his wife’s. On September 28, 2014, a quiet Sunday, the nursing-home staff allowed Nelson in, even though it was not within visiting hours; Nelson hugged his wife and placed his homemade bomb between them, which killed Neusa but only hurt him. The case, which became known as ‘a Romeo and Juliet of the elderly’, is reconstructed by Vitor Hugo Brandalise in his book-length investigation O último abraço (The last hug). This is a nonfiction work, based on hundreds of hours of interviews Brandalise conducted with Nelson and his family, among others; yet, it reads like a novel, constituting a narrative that foments a debate about old age, palliative care, and euthanasia in Brazil.

Despite Neusa’s depression, her whole family believed Nelson had fulfilled her wishes. However, euthanasia remains a crime in Brazil – a homicide according to Article 121 of the Penal Code. As Brandalise reminds us, euthanasia is also considered unethical by Brazil’s Federal Council of Medicine: doctors are not authorized to give a terminally ill patient a ‘merciful death’, much less an ordinary citizen. The officer who responded to the incident was moved by the story, but had to indict Nelson, who faced up to twenty years in prison. As Nelson had a fixed address and was a first-time offender, his lawyers tried to convince a judge to allow him to undergo the process in freedom; the defence collected 17 handwritten affidavits from family members, friends, and even the nursing-home director, to prove that Nelson truly loved his wife. The judge agreed and revoked Nelson’s preventive prison. As Brandalise mentions in his postface, up to the launch of the book in 2017, Nelson still awaited trial. In order to contextualize the case, Brandalise interviews Reinaldo Ayer de Oliveira, Professor of Bioethics at the University of São Paulo, who sees the euthanasia debate as following a progression in Brazil: first, the denouncement of dysthanasia (or ‘bad death’), i.e., the unnecessary lengthening of suffering; then, the recommendation of orthothanasia (or ‘natural death’), i.e., without artificial medical interference, which was the subject of a 2006 resolution by the Federal Council of Medicine; and now the grappling with euthanasia, something Prof. Ayer de Oliveira states Brazil must do – adding that society evolves faster than science and ethical norms. Given the media attention to Nelson-and-Neusa’s case, with the involvement of interest groups such as BoaMorte.org and the UNIFIPMoc/Afya Law School, the debate is ongoing. If Brandalise’s book promotes discussions around euthanasia, it also reports on the importance of Brazil’s National Suicide Prevention Plan (launched in 2006), which successfully impacted Nelson’s own life: after Neusa’s death, Nelson accepted the help of a psychiatrist and gerontologist and seemed to no longer consider suicide. Thus, even if Nelson claims to not regret his role in the death of his wife, his own survival story makes the case that that suicide prevention plays an important role in assessing the desire to die.