Her window of opportunity for killing herself without assistance was closing quickly. Over the past year, Sandy's cognitive abilities had declined to the point where she sometimes couldn't figure out who was her daughter's mother, or how she was related to her sister. So we looked at the calendar and said, 'OK, if it's going to be next week, what day is it going to be?' And we just picked one.ДЄnd then, two months ago, shortly before her 70th birthday, Sandy's plan to kill herself started to become a reality. 'Across the years I did sort of say, 'Look, don't talk about this so much! Or find someone else to talk about it with.' ' Then she would say, 'Well, two more years.' There was a sort of matter-of-fact way that she talked about it, which was very her.'ДЄnd although she supported her mother's choice, at least in theory, Emily says all the talk about suicide began to grate. She would often say, 'Well, in two years I'm going to do it,' and then two years would go by and she hadn't declined enough where it warranted it. 'It was just sort of sprinkled throughout life. 'She talked about it a lot,' says Sandy's daughter, Emily Bem.

Sandy was constantly reminding the people around her that her suicide was an immovable fact looming somewhere in the not too distant future. She would often say, 'Well, in two years I'm going to do it.'ДЇor the Bems, the answer was to make Sandy's suicide a public process, a collective experience that Sandy and Daryl and the people they loved all went through together.ДЇrom the beginning, the suicide was talked about openly. It was just sort of sprinkled through life. So was it possible for Sandy to end her life without hurting the people around her? Rates of depression in those left behind are much higher than when a loved one dies a natural death. Typically, in the wake of a suicide family members are devastated. Both had volunteered at a suicide hotline, and so had an intimate appreciation of just how destructive the act of suicide could be. She and her husband, Daryl Bem, were both psychologists, professors emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Sandy's plan was to wait until the last conceivable moment that it was physically possible for her to commit suicide alone, then go off and kill herself. For her, a life without books and the ability to recognize the people she loved wasn't a life she wanted.ДЄnd so she decided there was only one thing to do. Sandy was 65 years old, an unsentimental woman and strong willed. It's a description of one woman's choice and what came of it.ДЇive years ago, after doctors told her that she had Alzheimer's disease that would eventually steal her ability to read, write and recognize people, Sandy Bem decided to kill herself.

This story is in no way an endorsement of suicide.

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