Rick and Nora Miller in 1995.

Several of them really. I was born in Vermont, although I grew up elsewhere. My folks returned to Vermont when I finished high school and I was married in a small-town Vermont church in 1968. My husband and I traveled the country a bit, but soon we also returned to Vermont, and my son was born there in 1972. When he was 7, we set out to travel again and landed in Oregon, where we spent the next 25 years.

I always sensed a kinship between people in Oregon and people in Vermont, despite some obvious differences in terrain and population size. In both places, I met down-to-earth, hard-working people who treasured their independence and honored their interconnectedness. It was that mix, I think, that led Oregonians to vote, twice, for the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, first with a solid majority in 1994 and again, with an even stronger percentage in 1997. After a failed court challenge, the law went into effect in 1997, a model of pragmatic, sensitive and adamant caring for the those independent citizens who wished to take control of their last moments of life.

My family all supported the passage of the law and celebrated its enactment, having seen first hand what it means to have no choice in the matter. In the early 90s, my mother, who had remained in Vermont ever since she and my father returned there in 1967, suffered a long slow decline from debilitating lung disease. Despite excellent care by her family and doctors, her last months were spent either in pain, or in a drug-induced haze of vague dread and delirium. As the disease wore on, she became so weak she could no longer swallow the pills intended to make her comfortable and despite her frequent pleas for a compassionate termination of her life, she could only wait for her body to give out. In the end, she didn't even know her daughters as we tended her and held her hands. She died as if she were a stranger among strangers.

In 1999, my husband developed incurable lung cancer. Almost his first words on hearing the diagnosis were "I plan to exercise my right under Oregon's law to die when I choose." His fierce independence gave him both the strength to make that decision and the need to have the choice to make. I will be forever grateful to my fellow Oregonians for having the compassion and foresight to recognize the essential importance of personal control at this most private personal moment.

Unlike my mother, my husband was able to exert some control over the way his life ended. His was what I might term a "good death." When we had no treatment options left and death was clearly in sight, he chose to leave us while he could still recognize us around him and tell us his final thoughts. We shared his last moments as a family, with a deep sense of our shared love and support.

Now Vermonters have the opportunity to grant the citizens of their state that same pragmatic, compassionate right to dignity and privacy at the end of life. To make this decision, you might want to know some critically important facts about how the Oregon law has worked in the past 12 years:

• Only patients who are diagnosed with less than six months to live may make the request, and they must wait 15 days and make the request a second time before the prescription can be written.
• In 1998, the first full year after the act went into effect, 24 Oregonians asked their physicians for the prescription that would allow them to choose the circumstances of their death, and 16 chose to end their lives by taking the prescribed medications.
• The most recent report from the state shows in 2009, 95 requested prescriptions and 59 ended their lives with the prescribed medications.

These deaths represent a tiny, relatively constant percentage of all deaths in Oregon each year, but to the recipients of these prescriptions, and to their loving families, the choice is central to what it means to be an Oregonian—to be independent and yet interconnected, to honor your neighbors differences and share their humanity.

If what I have perceived as similarities between Vermonters and Oregonians hold true, you will soon have the opportunity to consider a law similar to Oregon's. No one likes to talk about death and dying, but eventually we all face the subject firsthand. If you accept the fact of death, you can then consider and address the quality of death.

For your neighbors, for your families and for yourselves, make sure you have the option of choice when it matters most.

Thank you,

Nora Miller

Portland, Oregon