If living with a disease that is likely to take us down in the next six months, should we not have a humane and legal way to embrace death on our own terms?

My husband died in 2021, just two weeks after he learned that he had an aggressive cancer. After spending a week in the hospital, with doctors struggling to manage his pain, he came home on hospice care.

Michael was allergic to morphine, which made everything trickier. He needed a different, liquid pain medication, but only pills were available on the Friday night when he came home to die. Our pharmacist called every other pharmacy in town and then promised to have liquid medication by Monday.

When Michael could no longer swallow crushed pills in applesauce, his dying process became immensely more painful than it should have been. I called the hospice nurse, saying that this was unacceptable and I needed her to find a solution. She offered a partial solution to get us through the night, and Michael’s pain continued.

I slept next to his bed, awakening every time he cried out and smearing a paste of crushed pills between his cheek and gums to give him some relief. His son and I prayed for death to end his suffering. Michael died on Sunday night, before the liquid medication he needed even arrived, and then we grieved, trying to fathom how we might have managed it better.

In contrast, the death of a friend’s husband was peaceful and even joyful. Irwin had been bedridden with a degenerative disease for several months and had fulfilled the prerequisites to choose the timing of his death according to Maine’s Death With Dignity law. Those prerequisites are almost identical to the ones in New Hampshire House Bill 254, “The New Hampshire End of Life Freedom Act.”

After being examined and questioned by two doctors, Irwin received a prescription that he could fill when he felt ready. When Irwin’s pain had stripped all pleasure from his time with his wife, he set a date for his death and told their family and closest friends.

On the day of his death, they gathered to surround him with love, telling stories and laughing with Irwin. When he felt that it was time to leave, he took the prescribed drugs in two stages. The was a third dose, but he passed peacefully before it was time to take it.

Irwin’s loved ones miss him dearly. Even so, all who accompanied him in his last hours of life agree that his was a blessed departure on a day made holy by his clarity, his choice and his invitation to celebrate it with him. He carried love, not pain, through his final hour.

My husband deserved to have a death with dignity, and instead he had a tortured exit. Everyone for whom the end is in sight should have a choice – whether they elect it or not – to leave as Irwin did.

Please ask your legislator to support H.B. 254.

The Rev. Lane Fisher is a resident of Peterborough. She is minister at Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church.