Page to Screen: How To Die In Oregon
Last Friday, I reviewed Pamela Ribon’s You Take It From Here. In the acknowledgements Ribon writes that as part of her research for the book, she watched and “pretty much blew out a tear duct over the moving documentary How To Die In Oregon.” When I Googled the documentary and discovered that it won the 2011 Grand Jury Prize for Documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival, I decided this was a movie I needed to watch.
The subject of How To Die In Oregon is Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, which was passed in 1994 and upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 2006. Oregon was the first state to pass this kind of law. The film opens with a crotchety cancer patient named Roger drinking his lethal dose of Seconal and laying down to await his death.
After that we meet Cody Curtis, a woman in her fifties with terminal liver cancer. When she first appears on camera, she looks healthy and happy. The film follows her decline and how she makes her decision about when it’s time for her to take her life. The filmmaker made a good decision in choosing Cody – she is smart, sensitive, articulate and lovable. I have a HUGE fear of death – my living will basically says keep me alive at all costs. But listening to Cody speak about what dying with dignity means and seeing how she was using her time before her death actually made me understand why someone with a terminal illness would want to choose their date of death.
This film also follows a woman from the state of Washington whose husband died of cancer. At the time he was dying, Washington did not have a Death With Dignity Act. Even though he wanted to take his life before his suffering got too bad, he was not able to. I think hearing about how things were for this man at the end will be eye-opening for a lot of people who do not realize how bad things can get at the end. It’s more than just pain. For instance, this man could not ever close his eyes because his brain tumor was pushing his eyeballs out.
Before he died, he asked his wife to please help make it so that other terminally ill people in Washington would not have to suffer as he did. The film follows his wife’s journey working trying to get a Death With Dignity bill passed in Washington.
I’m really glad I decided to watch this film. I learned so much about terminal illness and how to truly die with dignity. I definitely came away with a new perspective on death. I highly recommend How To Die In Oregon.
Buy this movie at:
Amazon Instant Video
