Southern Arizona Community

Ila has been a volunteer in the right-to-die movement for 25 years. She is a life member of what was the Hemlock Society, now End of Life Choices, as well as a founder, board member and life member of Final Exit Network. Before moving to Green Valley she and her husband Joe lived in Prescott where she trained and led volunteer teams in the Surgical and Intensive Care Units of the local hospital for four years, taught a "Final Choices" course at Yavapai College, and was a mentor in the music education program in the elementary schools. She is a Humanist, a Unitarian, a member of Freedom From Religion Foundation, the ACLU, and Free Inquiry. She has been a frequent speaker on the subjects of death and dying.

When asked about her interest in the right-to-die movement, she said: "I have seen too much of bad dying. Death shouldn’t have to be the way it is for most people. And because it is, most of us worry so much about our dying that we lose our lust for life. We didn’t ask to be born, so shouldn’t we have a say not just in how we live our lives, but how we end them? Because I don’t want to be a burden to myself or to the people I love when I die, I want to control my death to the extent I possibly can—as my husband did. He spent the last year of his life teaching me about all the things he’d been doing all his life—how to change a tire on the car, replace that gadget in the water tank of the toilet, know when it was time to replace the water heater, the furnace and the air conditioner, clean out the gutters, check the oil in the car and the air in the tires, understand how to manage the investment program, and make sure the advance directives and legal documents were up to date, and—make sure the kids knew where all those important papers were, and on and on and on.

He even taught me how to say "no more" to life when it was time to sweep all the medications off the table and say "today’s the day." No greater love can a man have for a woman than having put all the details of his life in order so they could face his death together—even the very last moments—so they could say their goodbyes, and so she could be free to take her time to mourn before she had to start her living all over again. He left nothing undone, no words unsaid.

Helping others, then, the way he helped me, to control the time, the place and the way they want to die has become my life’s passion. Because I cannot do this alone, I choose to do it with the help of Final Exit Network. Its members are the kind of people who improve the world we live in every day, and the kind of people with whom I want to associate.

Ila will talk about dying and having choices: "There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do is force someone to live who begs to die. Fundamentalist, political and religious ideologues have long pursued their own agendas which care not at all about personal choice or the fundamental liberties we as Americans and as human beings are supposed to enjoy. Through the efforts of organizations such as the Final Exit Network that embrace individual liberty and the ability of people to control the circumstances of the end of their own lives, we are becoming aware of the essence of being a free person—the ability to choose for ourselves, to express our wishes as free, autonomous, mature persons and to have our wishes regarding the end of our own lives respected.

"Members of Final Exit Network subscribe to the idea that either you believe you should have the right to make your own end-of-life decisions, or you believe that others should decide for you about how much suffering you should have to endure, and when and how you should die.

"A reincarnation of The Hemlock Society, Final Exit Network leaves legislative efforts to legalize physician-aid-in-dying to others, and focuses on direct service to those who must do their dying in the here and now, and who ask for help in hastening their own deaths. We encourage the use of Advance Directives; we promote research into new and better ways to self deliver; and we provide valuable information about issues relevant to the end of life as well as counseling and presence at the exit of any member who requests it.

"Our own personal cultures of life and our own personal ethics say a lot about who we are, how we live our lives and how we choose to end them. It is our belief that at its end, life is a right, not an obligation; and as such, that it belongs to the person who owns it—not to the medical community, the church or the State."

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