She was the unofficial spokeswoman for the right-to-die movement.
Brittany Maynard, who was just 29 years old, faced her decision to take her own life with a calm acceptance and unimaginable grace.
I was in awe of her.
Maynard, who suffered from an inoperable brain tumor, died in her Oregon bedroom, according to an obituary posted on her website.
People magazine reported online that she took a lethal dose of barbiturates on Saturday, as she had planned.
She simply drifted off to sleep. Forever.
I am overcome with sadness, but also with joy. For Maynard accomplished something both brave and rare. She died on her own terms. She beat the Grim Reaper at his own game. She ended her life before her suffering became so unbearable, her pain so great, she’d have no choice but to linger in misery.
Rest in peace.
She had so much to live for.
In a video released Wednesday by the nonprofit death-with-dignity advocacy group Compassion & Choices, Maynard said she was not ready to leave this world — yet.
“I still feel good enough and I still have enough joy and I still laugh and smile with my family and friends enough that it doesn’t seem like the right time [to die] now,’’ she said.
“But it will come, because I feel myself getting sicker. It’s happening each week.’’
I was moved to tears after hearing about Maynard’s ordeal, which made international headlines last month. In January, after she’d been married just over a year to the love of her life, Dan Diaz, 43, doctors told Maynard her excruciating headaches were caused by a brain tumor.
After undergoing two surgeries, she learned in April that her tumor had not only returned, it was Stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme, a malignant, aggressive form of brain cancer that was bound to kill her, slowly and painfully, in about six months if she did not take action first.
Maynard, who had trained to become a teacher before getting sick, abandoned plans to have children with Diaz. Her mother, Debbie Ziegler, 56, faced losing her only child.
Maynard set her date with death for Saturday, she announced in a viral video posted on YouTube. She planned to die in her bedroom, surrounded by her husband, mother, stepfather and best friend.
“There’s not a cell in my body that is suicidal or that wants to die,’’ she told People magazine in a cover story. “I want to live. I wish that there was a cure for my disease, but there is not.’’
Diaz took a leave of absence from his job as a market researcher, and Maynard and her family moved from California to Oregon, where the so-called Death with Dignity Act, which took effect in 1997, made it the first of five American states in which physicians may legally prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill, mentally competent adults.
Compassion & Choices established The Brittany Maynard Fund to raise money in her name to pay for its efforts to lobby state governments for laws permitting physician-assisted suicide.
On Oct. 24, a video was released online in which Maynard said she’d ticked off the last item on her bucket list. She’d visited the Grand Canyon with her husband and family.
I think we should applaud Brittany Maynard’s choice.
Life is precious. She knew that.
True-blue police hero seeing red
In 2009, New York City police Sgt. Christopher Newsom shot and killed a thug who opened fire in tourist-choked Times Square during the crowded holiday season. No innocents were hurt or killed. Now the hero cop is fed up with what he sees as the city government’s war on cops.
The latest outrage: Two NYPD officers were ordered to pay for and replace a burned-out headlight for Gwen Carr, the mother of alleged Staten Island police chokehold victim Eric Garner, helping her avoid a ticket.
“This latest case of ‘special treatment,’ that would surely land an officer in hot water if he or she performed the same service for a friend or family member, should be investigated to the fullest, and swift punishment should follow,’’ Newsom, a 22-year police vet, wrote me in an email. “This was a slap in the face and a betrayal to the hardworking men and women in blue already besieged by bad press by one of our own.
“Unfortunately, it looks like it may get worse before it gets better,’’ he wrote.
Well put.
Marriage in NY is a family affair
Ladies, it’s now OK to marry your uncle, or half-uncle.
The state’s highest court made a ruling in the case of a 34-year-old Vietnamese citizen who wed her mother’s 38-year-old half-brother in upstate Rochester in 2000, only to have an immigration judge try to boot her from the United States because, the judge said, the marriage was invalid.
But the six-judge state Court of Appeals ruled unanimously last week that unions between uncles and nieces, as opposed to parent-child and brother-sister marriages, are not viewed with horror. (Really?)
A niece and her half-uncle share the same genetic ties as first cousins — who, I was shocked to learn, are free to marry in New York state and other places. Some states ban marriages of cousins young enough to reproduce.
Creepy.
Bias to defeat bias is … bias
BuzzFeed.com and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism are offering a coveted, $85,000, one-year fellowship in investigative journalism, which also pays expenses and provides fringe benefits. Washington, DC-based conservative freelance journalist Evan Gahr thinks he’s qualified for the position.
Trouble is, “journalists of color and other diverse backgrounds’’ are being sought for the post, according to an advertisement. A lawyer told The Post’s Keith Kelly that the ad seems to bend employment laws because it smacks of reverse discrimination.
As a white Jew, Gahr, who informed BuzzFeed’s editor-in- chief that he’d start visiting a tanning salon in order to be considered for the post, looks as if he’s out of luck.