A few hours later, she joined the rest of the family for our last supper together. I don’t remember much of the evening; either I failed to capture that memory or I’ve erased it, too painful to keep. I do recall Julie had one bite of a friend’s homemade Key lime pie. Apparently, a sweet tooth never dies, even if you are about to. Before bed, Julie hugged and kissed each of us: her wife and two daughters; my brother, Jay, and his wife; and me. Tucked in under the covers, I pulled out my iPhone to continue a ritual I’d recently begun with my siblings. From the guest couch, I texted:
Steven: Good night, sibs
Jay: Good night 😘
Julie: Good night to the best big brothers in the whole world 💚💙❤️
Jay: Love you to the moon and back!!
Steven: And to the bestest sister ever
***
Two months earlier, I joined a conversation my sister and her wife were having with a social worker, a new member of their hospice care team. They kept discussing “the MAID,” which I soon came to understand is the acronym for the New Jersey law referred to as Medical Aid in Dying. It allows New Jersey residents with terminal illnesses to choose to end their lives by taking a cocktail of life-ending medications.
This important piece of legislation was enacted in 2019, and as of last year, 186 people had chosen to die this way. (That’s a very small percentage of annual New Jersey deaths.) Julie, a lawyer, had done her research and had told me that the Garden State is one of only 11 jurisdictions (10 states and the District of Columbia) that allow medical aid in dying, also known as death with dignity and end-of-life options.
If you live in one of the other 40 states, you must wait for the Grim Reaper to pay a visit, no matter how much pain and suffering that entails. Nor can you pack up and move to New Jersey (or most other states where MAID is legal), because you must be a resident to qualify, which, at best, can take time. Time is usually not readily on hand for those who are terminally ill.
In late 2017, Julie learned she had advanced ovarian cancer. Since then, she’d endured one nine-hour surgery, six rounds of chemo, three recurrences and two clinical trials. “Enough,” my sister told her oncologist a few days before her 61st birthday, in April of this year. “I’ve decided to end treatment,” she added, to make sure he understood, and then sang, off-key, the famous Carol Burnett song, “I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together.” She asked, “How much time do I have left?” His reply: “Two or three months, at the most.”
My sister understood from Day 1 that she’d most likely die from this cancer, which, when advanced, has a mortality rate of 80 to 85 percent, according to Dr. Jason Konner, a gynecologic oncologist in New Jersey. One by one, women she had befriended in an online support group died, their last weeks and days often made awful by what Julie called “Hail Mary” treatments — drugs, many with harsh side effects, often used out of desperation or denial.