[Magdalen] "California woman holds party before killing herself"

[Grace Cangialosi]

I have a dear 91-year-old friend in Southwest Virginia who had a "funeral party" for herself a year or so ago. I wasn't there, but she recently told me about it. She's not sick, just old and a bit frail, and still brilliant. She wanted to be able to enjoy the party while she's still alive, so she had friends and lots of her favorite music and wine. One of the featured activities was the decorating of her wooden coffin, which now sits on her screened-in porch with some plants and a couple of small sculptures on it. It's pine and very simple with wooden pole handles running the length of each side. And it is a thing of beauty! Her friends painted symbols of her life and career, from the logo of the Highlander Center in TN to her beloved red truck to the old barn on her farm. And they wrote all over it, like you'd do in a high school yearbook. I told her it's entirely too pretty to put in the ground! But that's what will happen. And her instructions are clear: when the time comes, she is to be laid in that coffin by her friends, loaded on to the back of her truck and taken to the small private cemetery on the farm where she will be buried. Period.
You'd have to know her to really appreciate how typical this is for her. 
No suicide, though, just nature taking its course. 

> On Aug 11, 2016, at 5:50 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Sounds like as good a way as any to go, as long as you know you're going
> anyway.
> 
> On Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 4:16 PM, M J _Mike_ Logsdon <mjl at ix.netcom.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> [I think "killing herself" is a bit crass, but at least they corrected it
>> in the final sentence.]
>> 
>> California woman holds party before killing herself
>> By JULIE WATSON
>> From Associated Press
>> August 11, 2016 2:53 PM EST
>> 
>> SAN DIEGO (AP) — A California woman with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease,
>> held a two-day party for her friends and relatives to say goodbye before
>> taking her life with a dose of prescribed drugs.
>> 
>> Betsy Davis, 41, became one of the first Californians to make use a new
>> state law allowing doctor-assisted suicide. Four other states have such
>> laws, with Oregon the first in 1997.
>> 
>> Davis shared her plans with her guests, giving them a detailed schedule
>> for the weekend that included the hour she planned to slip into a coma.
>> 
>> There were cocktails. There was pizza from her favorite local joint. There
>> was a screening of one of her favorite movies. And then her friends said
>> their goodbyes and left.
>> 
>> Davis was wheeled out to a canopy bed on a hillside and took her own life.
>>