She Was Not Incurably Ill But She Wanted to Die -- And She Did

"In the last months of her life, the only thing that appeared to give her real joy was the hope that she would be ending it." In New York Magazine, Evelyn Jouvenet (a pseudonym) writes about her mother's assisted death. In June, my sister and I had learned, almost by accident, that she was seeking an assisted suicide. I was on the phone with Mom, listening to her complain about an annoying bureaucrat at the New York County Clerk’s Office, when she mentioned it. “I am putting in an application to Pegasos,” she said impassively, “so I was getting some documents for them.” I texted my sister while we were on the phone: “What the fuck? Why didn’t you tell me about Mom applying to die?” Three little dots. “Wait,” My sister wrote back. “What. What is she doing?”... In the last months of her life, the only thing that appeared to give her real joy was the hope that she would be ending it. In the U.S., ten states allow physician-assisted death, which is available only to residents who are terminally ill with no more than six months to live. In Canada, the laws are more expansive, but citizens still need a diagnosis — if not a terminal condition, then an incurable one with intolerable suffering and an advanced state of decline. In Switzerland, where a foreigner can go to receive aid in dying, there are fewer restrictions on who is eligible. Pegasos is one of the only organizations that will help elderly people who have not been diagnosed with a terminal illness but who are tired of life. Its website notes that “old age is rarely kind” and that “for a person to be in the headspace of considering ending their lives, their quality of life must be qualitatively poor.” My mother had pinned her hopes on this “tired of life” catchall. She had a three-pronged rationale, she told us over the phone: The world was going to hell, and she did not want to see more; she did not get joy out of the everyday pleasures of life or her relationships; and she did not want to face the degradations of aging. This is exactly the situation that most horrifies opponents of medically assisted death. How can you be sure this is a rational decision and not the result of clinical depression? This article, heartbreaking from the daughter's perspective, will not reassure them. And yet, her mother's resolve, and her history of being immune to the impact her choices have on those who love her, make it clear that one way or another, she was determined to end her life.