Howard planned for his death very carefully. He made arrangements with his agent, Otis Kline, for the handling of his stories in the event of his death. He carefully assembled the manuscripts he had yet to submit to Weird Tales or the Kline agency, with instructions on where they were to be sent. He borrowed a gun, a .380 Colt automatic, from a friend who was unaware of his intentions. His father may have hidden Robert’s own guns, aware of what he might be contemplating. He said that he had seen his son make preparations on earlier occasions when it appeared Mrs. Howard might die and that he tried to keep an eye on Robert, but did not expect him to act before his mother died.

Hester Howard sank into her final coma around the 8th June, 1936. On the 10th, Robert went to Brownwood and purchased a cemetery lot for three burials, with perpetual care. He asked Dr. J. W. Dill, a friend of his father’s who had come to be with Dr. Howard during his wife’s final illness, whether anyone had been known to live after being shot through the brain. Unaware of Robert’s plan, the doctor told him that such an injury meant certain death. The night before, Robert had disarmed his father of his deadly intent, assuming “an almost cheerful attitude... He came to me in the night, put his arm around me and said, buck up, you are equal to it, you will go through it all right.” On the morning of the 11th, Robert asked the nurse attending Mrs. Howard if she thought his mother would ever regain consciousness, and was told she would not.

Robert Howard got up and walked into his room, where he typed a four-line couplet on the Underwood typewriter that had served him for ten years:

He then walked out of the house and got into his 1935 Chevy. The hired cook stated later that she saw him raise his hands in prayer. Was he praying or preparing the gun? She then heard a shot, and saw Robert slump over the steering wheel. She screamed. Robert’s father and Dr. Dill ran out to the car and carried his limp body back into the house. He had shot himself above the right ear, the bullet emerging on the left side of his head. Robert Howard’s robust health allowed him to survive this terrible wound for almost eight hours. He died at around 4:00 pm, Thursday, June 11, 1936, without ever regaining consciousness. His mother died the following day, also without regaining consciousness. A double funeral was held on June 14, and the mother and son were transported to Greenleaf Cemetery in Brownwood for burial.

It is a regrettable postscript that Robert E. Howard’s suicide has tended to color interpretations of his mental health. While it is hard to maintain that killing oneself at the age of 30 is ‘normal’ behavior, suicide is often a very complex response to real or perceived problems. There are many reasons people take their own lives, and not all of them are rooted in grief, despair or depression. It is doubly unfortunate, in Howard’s case, that his action coincided with his mother’s death, which has led to the inevitable, but in my view simplistic notion that he killed himself out of despondency. This has, in turn, led to the supposition - without any compelling evidence - that he was ‘unnaturally’ close to or dependent upon his mother. It may well be that, had he not been needed to care for his mother, Robert would have taken his life even earlier. Or it may be that, had there been a friend with him to see him through the crisis, Robert would have carried on after her death. We can never really know. To link his suicide solely with his mother’s death, though, is to ignore a host of other contributing factors.