The day he picked to die, Robert Fuller had the party of a lifetime. With an elaborately carved walking stick, he shuffled around to greet dozens of well-wishers and friends from across the decades, fellow church parishioners and social-work volunteers. A violinist and soprano performed "Ave Maria
In the morning, he dressed in a blue Hawaiian shirt and married his partner while sitting on a couch in their senior housing apartment. He then took the elevator down three floors to the building's common room, decorated with balloons and flowers.
As such laws grow more popular — they have taken or will take effect in Hawaii, New Jersey and Maine this year, making it nine states where"aid in dying" is allowed — more people who are suffering and terminally ill have the option of hastening their death. Those who do cite a variety of reasons — fear of losing their autonomy or dignity, becoming a burden to loved ones, becoming unable to enjoy life — but they are united in a desire to take control of their own ends.
But his old default setting persisted through much of his life, a sort of undercurrent to the way he lived"out loud," as he put it. Whether such deaths do constitute suicide is a semantic debate. In Washington and other states with aid-in-dying laws, coroners are forbidden from categorizing the deaths as suicides; instead, they list natural causes. Opponents, including the American Medical Association, maintain that"assisted suicide" is more accurate.Fuller had long thought that if he were ever to become terminally ill, he would want to control his death.
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