An Associated Press feel-good story surfaced recently concerning the festive send-off and theatrical suicide of a 75-year-old Seattle man named Robert Fuller, who claimed to have terminal cancer. "Claimed" is necessary here, because hard facts pertinent to the story's background aren't easy to come by.
According to Fuller, he was the product of serial tragedy. His parents struggled in a loveless marriage. When he was eight, his mother walked into a river to drown herself, and Fuller saw her corpse in the water. His own marriage ended when he told his wife he was gay, whereat he plunged into a frenzy of sexual activity that bordered on suicidal, and contracted AIDS as a consequence. Later in life, he overcame addiction to drugs and alcohol and resumed some manner of association with the Catholic Church, at the same time presenting himself as a bestower of kindnesses on the needy. And a shaman.
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