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

[Jay Weigel]

That's pretty cool, Grace. I've always said I'd rather have a party than a
funeral. I don't have that many friends around here though. And I think I
still want to be cremated and scattered, part of me in the Atlantic Ocean,
part here in the Shenandoah Valley that I've come to love so much, and
maybe a little back in Tennessee that I still love and miss.

On Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 8:47 PM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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.
> >>
>