What can we say to a famous children’s author, facing Alzheimer’s diagnosis, who is contemplating assisted suicide?

By: Dave Andrusko, originally published September 24, 2025, National Right to Life

Back in 2014, Rai Rojas wrote a deeply touching story titled “ The story behind ‘I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always,’ Robert Munsch’s classic children’s story.” All of us who have read Munsch’s story can identify with the almost irresistible need to weep.

If you recall, as Leah Savas of  World magazine  reminds us today,

But Rai quoted from Munsch’s webpage which explained the book’s backstory:

It moves me even today, as I thought back on reading it to my children. I recommend you read it before you read of the devastating news that facing an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Robert Munsch says he is contemplating assisted suicide.

“Hello, Doc — come kill me!” the Canadian citizen joked to the  New York Times. “How much time do I have? Fifteen seconds!”

Munsch was interviewed  by the  New York Times’   Katie Engelhart. The title of her profile (as you read it, you come away thinking that perhaps it was as much for her as her readers) was “ When Dementia Steals the Imagination of a Children’s Book Writer.”

Savas points her readers to a profoundly moving story written following the  Times’  profile by Amanda Achtman at   Public Discourse.  The title is “ Will You Love Me Forever?”

It is critically  important to know that Achtman “has worked on Parliament Hill in an effort to prevent the expansion of euthanasia to persons with living with disabilities or mental illness. Amanda works with Canadian Physicians for Life and teaches Catholic Bioethics at End of Life at St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry.” She knows of what she speaks.

Love you forever  “is a touching story of the natural circle of life and of the unconditional love for which we are made,” Achtman writes. “This is one reason why many Canadians are shocked that the book’s author, of all people, is saying he wants a doctor to end his life by euthanasia.”

Engelhart’s article, Achtman writes, “then fixates on what Munsch can no longer do. He can no longer ride a bike, drive a car, and, particularly cruelly for an author, he can no longer read. Like the mother in his classic story, he himself has become old and sick. But, unlike her, he now is tempted to seek state-sponsored suicide.”

Achtman observes, in a way, how readers are let down (to put it selfishly) by “schedul[ing] his death at the hands of a physician” which “would contradict the message of unconditional love that he shared all those years ago, a message that resonated with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of children and parents.”

But she makes us understand how suicide, assisted or otherwise, “would also contradict the support and understanding with which, thankfully, he was met throughout his life.

When he faced depression and suicidal ideation, he got a psychiatrist. When he struggled with drugs and alcohol, he joined Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous. After he lost two children, he and his wife welcomed three through adoption. But now that he is elderly and asking for euthanasia, what is on offer? Why, only now, should there not be any antidote?” 

It turns out that Munsch’s thoughts are not new, according to one of his children. He “discussed this with journalists four years ago upon receiving diagnoses of dementia and Parkinson’s.”

But, bringing us full circle, Achtman writes that  Love You Forever,  his most famous book of all,

In a tragic way, these were

Achtman’s conclusion reminds us of our fundamental interdependence, whether we are unborn children or very old and frail:

Dave Andrusko is Editor at National Right to Life News.

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