{"id":312912,"date":"2024-06-01T10:40:14","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T15:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=312912"},"modified":"2024-05-30T17:18:11","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T22:18:11","slug":"woman-lost-parents-assisted-suicide-wants-legal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/woman-lost-parents-assisted-suicide-wants-legal\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman who lost both parents to assisted suicide now wants it legal everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Serene Meshel-Dillman lost both her parents to assisted suicide \u2014 and now she’s campaigning for others to do the same.<\/p>\n

In an interview with PEOPLE<\/a>, Meshel-Dillman spoke about her new documentary film, “Take Me Out Feet First,” which chronicled her parents’ deaths. Her mother, Miriam, was the first to die, after being diagnosed with stage four spindle cell sarcoma. She was told she had only months to live.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe called me from the car on the way back from the doctor and she said, \u2018I feel like I’m living in an alternative universe because I just got a three-month death diagnosis,” Meshel-Dillman said, explaining that Miriam had seen her daughter-in-law battle breast cancer for years before ultimately dying. “She just didn’t want to go through that and she didn’t want us to go through that. It was a no brainer. She said, \u2018This is what I’m doing.\u2019 She didn’t even ask about it, she just said, \u2018I’m doing it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Meshel-Dillman didn’t disagree, telling PEOPLE it was the right thing to do. \u201cI just sort of felt like I had to hold her hand and just be there. It just felt right,” she said. \u201cI think that brought us closer in the end. It really helped us come to terms, express our love for each other, express our kind of regret of not having done it sooner. And it put me and her in a very good place. We both told each other we loved each other, and we kissed and hugged. It was very emotional and certainly would not have happened then had she not been about to die. So it kind of forced the issue, but in a good way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miriam’s death is centered in the trailer for the documentary, in which you can see her watching a final dance performance, being helped into her bed, and people around her preparing the fatal cocktail of drugs.<\/p>\n