Hemingway continued to rework the material that was published as A Moveable Feast through the 1950s.[137] In mid-1959, he visited Spain to research a series of bullfighting articles commissioned by Life magazine.[143] Life wanted only 10,000 words, but the manuscript grew out of control.[144] For the first time in his life he could not organize his writing, so he asked A. E. Hotchner to travel to Cuba to help him. Hotchner helped trim the Life piece down to 40,000 words, and Scribner's agreed to a full-length book version (The Dangerous Summer) of almost 130,000 words.[145] Hotchner found Hemingway to be "unusually hesitant, disorganized, and confused",[146] and suffering badly from failing eyesight.[147] He left Cuba for the last time on July 25, 1960. Mary went with him to New York where he set up a small office and attempted unsuccessfully to work. Soon after, he left New York, traveling without Mary to Spain to be photographed for the front cover of Life magazine. A few days later the news reported that he was seriously ill and on the verge of dying, which panicked Mary until she received a cable from him telling her, "Reports false. Enroute Madrid. Love Papa."[148] He was, in fact, seriously ill, and believed himself to be on the verge of a breakdown.[145] Feeling lonely, he took to his bed for days, retreating into silence, despite having the first installments of The Dangerous Summer published in Life that September to good reviews.[149] In October, he went back to New York, where he refused to leave Mary's apartment, presuming that he was being watched. She quickly took him to Idaho, where they were met at the train station in Ketchum by local physician George Saviers.[145]
He was concerned about finances, fretted that he would never return to Cuba to retrieve the manuscripts that he had left in a bank vault, and missed his home, his books, and his life there.[150] He became paranoid, believing that the FBI was actively monitoring his movements in Ketchum.[147][note 6] Mary was unable to care for her husband and it was anathema for a man of Hemingway's generation to accept he suffered from mental illness. At the end of November, Saviers flew him to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota on that pretext that he was to be treated for hypertension.[150] He was checked in under Saviers's name to maintain anonymity.[149]
Meyers writes that "an aura of secrecy surrounds Hemingway's treatment at the Mayo" but confirms that he was treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as many as 15 times in December 1960 and was "released in ruins" in January 1961.[151] Reynolds gained access to Hemingway's records at the Mayo, which document 10 ECT sessions. The doctors in Rochester told Hemingway the depressive state for which he was being treated may have been caused by his long-term use of Reserpine and Ritalin.[152] Of the ECT therapy, Hemingway told Hotchner, "What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient."[153] In late January 1961 he was sent home, as Meyers writes, "in ruins". Asked to provide a tribute to President Kennedy in February he could only produce a few sentences after a week's effort. A few months later, on April 21, Mary found him with a shotgun in the kitchen. She called Saviers, who admitted Hemingway to the Sun Valley Hospital under sedation. Once the weather cleared, Saviers flew again to Rochester with his patient.[154] Hemingway underwent three electroshock treatments during that visit.[155] He was released at the end of June and was home in Ketchum on June 30. Two days later he "quite deliberately" shot himself with his favorite shotgun in the early morning hours of July 2, 1961.[156] Meyers writes that he unlocked the basement storeroom where his guns were kept, went upstairs to the front entrance foyer, "pushed two shells into the twelve-gauge Boss shotgun ... put the end of the barrel into his mouth, pulled the trigger and blew out his brains."[157]
When the authorities arrived, Mary was sedated and taken to the hospital. Returning to the house the next day, she cleaned the house and saw to the funeral and travel arrangements. Bernice Kert writes that it "did not seem to her a conscious lie" when she told the press that his death had been accidental.[158] In a press interview five years later, Mary confirmed that he had shot himself.[159] Family and friends flew to Ketchum for the funeral, officiated by the local Catholic priest, who believed that the death had been accidental.[158] An altar boy fainted at the head of the casket during the funeral, and Hemingway's brother Leicester wrote: "It seemed to me Ernest would have approved of it all."[160]
Hemingway's behavior during his final years had been similar to that of his father before he killed himself;[161] his father may have had hereditary hemochromatosis, whereby the excessive accumulation of iron in tissues culminates in mental and physical deterioration.[162] Medical records made available in 1991 confirmed that Hemingway had been diagnosed with hemochromatosis in early 1961.[163] His sister Ursula and his brother Leicester also killed themselves.[164] Hemingway's health was further complicated by heavy drinking throughout most of his life.[117]
