Brittany Maynard, who became an advocate for the “Death with Dignity” law as she was battling an inoperable brain tumor, took the time to send an inspiring email to a woman she never met just hours before ending her life. Brittany sent the powerful email to Barbara Mancini of Philadelphia, who had sent Maynard a message on October 30, but never expected to receive a reply since Maynard’s health was quickly deteriorating.
“In the note, I told her I admired what she was doing. I felt it was selfless and courageous ,” Mancini told ABC News today. “I never expected she would respond because it was late October and I knew she was having daily seizures and she was getting worse all the time.”
But Maynard, who was dying from brain cancer, did respond. She emailed Mancini just hours before she ended her life on November 1.
Mancini, a former nurse, has had her own experience with assisted suicide, as reported by the Huffington Post . She was arrested in 2013 for giving her terminally ill father a lethal dose of morphine. She was exonerated this February, but Mancini is still haunted by the incident.
“I was under prosecution for a year,” she said. “It was a horrible, horrible thing to go through.”
In her note, Maynard said she was familiar with Mancini’s story, and urged her to keep fighting for “Death with Dignity” laws.
“I am so sorry you had to endure that,” she wrote. “It was clear to me, in my heart, that you were doing your very best to care for your terminally ailing father. That is a difficult job. As a terminally ill person myself, I understand what the level of sacrifice means for a loving and supportive family on an emotional, physical and financial level. Stories like yours and mine put human faces on a controversial topic that many politicians are happy to sweep under the rug. I wish I could have had the pleasure of meeting you in person.”
Mancini said she was “deeply touched” by the note, especially since it was written at the end of Maynard’s life. She vows to continue advocating so more people like her dad and Maynard can die in peace.
“I truly believe it’s the right thing to allow dying people who are mentally competent have a choice in how their life ends,” she said.
As reported recently by the Inquisitr , Maynard was a vocal supporter of “Death with Dignity” and the fight to pass this law across the country so that everyone who has a terminal illness has the rights and choice to end their life on their own terms. Maynard’s story has prompted some lawmakers to take action on passing “Death with Dignity” laws. As CBS News reported, the New Jersey Assembly passed a “Death with Dignity” law on November 13, allowing physicians to write prescriptions for life-ending drugs to terminally-ill patients. The bill was introduced by Assemblyman John Burzichelli whose sister, Claudia Burzichelli, died from lung cancer in 2013.
To learn more about “Death with Dignity”, you can visit the Death with Dignity National Center’s website at http://www.deathwithdignity.org.
