The letter opens with “I will take my life today around noon. It is time.”It’s a peaceful and serene suicide note, written by 85-year-old Gillian Bennett, a child psychologist from Canada. The great-grandmother suffered from dementia and wrote that “dementia is taking its toll and I have nearly lost myself. I have nearly lost me.”
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Jonathan Bennett, Gillian’s husband since 1957, published Gillian’s 4-page letter on the website DeadatNoon, which they created specifically for that purpose. Since Mrs. Bennett’s death, her letter has been read by almost half a million people. “Above everything else, Gillian wanted to get a conversation going—and by God, has she,” Mr. Bennett told the New Zealand Herald. “I am very proud of her. I miss her horribly but I have no sense that ‘oh, this was a mistake.’ “Mrs. Bennett, a child psychologist, had always believed in her right to die and felt passionately about it.”She was vigorously opposed to the resources that are put into simply keeping the heart beating in a body that wouldn’t allow a person any sort of life,” Mr. Bennett said. “That was a very strong view of hers for as long as I knew her. It has always been clear that she would not go out that way.””Understand that I am giving up nothing that I want by committing suicide” said Mrs. Bennett in her letter. “All I lose is an indefinite number of years of being a vegetable in a hospital setting, eating up the country’s money but having not the faintest idea of who I am.””Each of us is born uniquely and dies uniquely. I think of dying as a final adventure with a predictably abrupt end. I know when it’s time to leave and I do not find it scary,” she continues.”Today, now, I go cheerfully and so thankfully into that good night. Jonathan, the courageous, the faithful, the true and the gentle, surrounds me with company. I need no more.””It is almost noon.”Read Gillian Bennett’s entire letter at DeadatNoon.MORE: Healthy Approaches for Treating Depresssion
