A year ago this Christmas, my grandmother (I had always called her Nana) was diagnosed with cancer. She lived for many months after the diagnosis, but she lived them in pain.

She took morphine to relieve the pain. Hospice workers brought it to her regularly. It came in little syringes, which she squeezed under her tongue. When the time came that she could take her next dose, she always did because whatever she was given was not enough. The pain in her back was always there, so she could barely move herself and we couldn't even hug her.

There was a downside to the morphine. It left her in a stupor. She told us how she would wake up in the middle of the night, confused. What time is it? 8:30? Is it in the morning or the night? Oh no! Was I supposed to take the twins to school? The liquid morphine numbed her lips and cheeks, so that this lady who always prided herself on her grooming was mortified by food dribbling out of her mouth.

My aunt, who lived next door, took care of her. She cooked extra meals and helped with whatever Nana needed. Nana believed she was a burden to the family; she was sure of it. What a shame it is to not even be able to take yourself to the bathroom. And to have your daughter be the one that has to clean you up. She would have killed herself if she could have.

During one visit, Nana told us about that one things she regretted most in her life. It was some argument that she had had with my mom and my aunt, which she tried to explain. On the way home, my mom said she didn't remember any argument like that, and that she didn't think it had happened. I heard my mom talking to my aunt on the phone later, and they decided that Nana was just confused, maybe by a TV show or a book she had read.

Opponents of assisted suicide say that it is not for us to decide when we should die, that it should be up to our god. Some say that doctor-assisted suicide would be abused.

What kind of life is it, to live only for the next dose of painkiller? Not being able to formulate a coherent sentence? Not being able to discern dreams from reality? Is that the kind of life that our god would have wanted for us?

Nana died in April. We grieved for her. I learned later that she had discussed suicide with my mom and my aunt. They had agreed that it would be okay with them if she overdosed on the morphine, even though assisted suicide isn't legal in the state of Washington. She saved up 20 doses of morphine and took it in one dose.

It didn't work. She fell asleep, but she woke up. Until that time, she had felt pleased with her secret plan. After that she resigned herself to a slow death.

She lived the last month in pain in a nursing home. The twins, my cousins, visited her every day after school, and each Sunday my family drove over the river from Oregon to Washington, picked her up, and drove her to my aunt's house for dinner. But it became hard, when she couldn't walk without help, and eventually she needed to be lifted from the bed to the wheelchair, and then into the car. She was embarrassed to be carried by her sons-in-law. Her pain always started again long before she could take the next dose of morphine.

Here in Oregon, we have a law that would have let Nana die respectfully, but Nana lived in Washington. The law requires agreement of the patient, the close family, and the doctor, which we had. It requires that the patient wait a while, so that it is not a spur of the moment decision. She had done that, too. It requires that the doctor's diagnosis be that the sickness will be fatal. She had that too. How could this be abused? If everyone agrees that continuing life would only cause more suffering, why not allow her doctor to provide her the means to end it?