Prognosis: A Memoir of My Brain

by Sarah Vallance

Watching Bess die reminded me how easy death could have been for my father. I cursed myself for my lack of courage. A single needle prick, an infusion of morphine, his pain gone. Bess neither wanted nor deserved to die, and I had killed her. My father wanted desperately to die, and I kept him alive, prolonging his suffering. Grief for Bess seeped into my grief for my father.

So relevant to the question of a person’s right to choose when they die.

The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside us while we live.