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

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

Who would know?  Just do it and apologize later....

"Hmmm. Is it just me, or is there a lot of dust around here today?"

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 4:42 PM, Clarissa Canning <canplum at gmail.com> wrote:

> wow so neat for this lady. I would love my ashes to be put in " the secret
> garden " at our summer home." not sure it's allowed.  It not really a
> garden Not used for anything. It was the passage to the original barn. sits
> much Lower than the road & few parking spaces we have.  It does  contain an
> old large grave stone of a great great grandmother.
>
>
>
> On Aug 12, 2016 11:21 AM, "Jay Weigel" <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
> > >>
> >
>