Gavin Newsom on His Mother's Assisted Death

California governor Gavin Newsom held his mother's hand as she died in 2002. In his book he talks about his complicated feelings about her and her choice to have an assisted death. From the Washington Post: It was the spring of 2002 when Gavin Newsom’s mother Tessa, dying of cancer, stunned him with a voicemail. If he wanted to see her again, she told him, it would need to be before the following Thursday, when she planned to end her life. Newsom, then a 34-year-old San Francisco supervisor, did not try to dissuade her, he recounted in an interview with The Washington Post. The fast-rising politician was wracked with guilt from being distant and busy as she dealt with the unbearable pain of the breast cancer spreading through her body. Newsom’s account of his mother’s death at the age of 55 by assisted suicide, and his feelings of grief and remorse toward a woman with whom he had a loving but complex relationship, is one of the most revealing and emotional passages in the California governor’s book.