Isabel Says Good-Bye:: Conversations and Choice

By Muriel Vasconcellos

Told in emails, you will learn how, as Isabel's lung cancer advanced and her health declined, she worked with her doctor to arrange for her physician-assisted death. She pre-planned an uplifting ceremony and spent the day before it saying good-bye to her friends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798765241271

Muriel Vasconcellos

The main contributors to this book are friends of Isabel who rallied around her to support her in her cancer journey. Alice is a long-time colleague with whom she spent many vacations. Muriel is another colleague, and her friend Sandy met Isabel and Alice in San Diego. A cousin and other friends of Isabel appear near the end of the book.

Book preview

Isabel

Says

Good-bye

CONVERSATIONS

AND CHOICE

EDITED BY

MURIEL VASCONCELLOS

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Copyright © 2023 Edited by Muriel Vasconcellos.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them. The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 979-8-7652-4126-4 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-4128-8 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-4127-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023907404

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/07/2023

Contents

Who Isabel Was

Prelude

Fourteen Months Later

TRIBUTES

Shaoping Moss

Ken Kronenberg

Who Isabel Was

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Isabel Adeline Leonard was born in Wales, UK, on August 24, 1943. She had a younger sister and many cousins. At Bristol University (UK), she studied French, in which she became bilingual, as well as Spanish. She later added Italian, Portuguese, German, and Dutch, but only for reading and translating into English. Music was her passion: she played piano, organ, and renaissance harp and had a beautiful singing voice. She was never shy about performing. She would often burst into song and delighted in writing parodies.

In 1965, immediately after graduating from Bristol, and still uncertain about her future career, Isabel migrated to the United States (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and ultimately became a naturalized citizen. In the late nineteen sixties, after a brief time living in a commune in Venice Beach, California, she settled down in the Boston area and started using her languages as a translator.

For five years she worked as project manager for a translation agency in Cambridge. It was on that job that she met Alice, a colleague who was to become a long-time friend. She then struck out on her own and started a translation agency with a business partner, Bill Grimes. They were both active members of the American Translators Association (ATA): Bill served on its Board for several years, while Isabel edited an early version of the ATA Chronicle. The Grimes and Leonard business thrived for more than two decades, until Bill suffered a stroke in 2000.

Isabel continued working as a successful free-lance translator up until shortly before her death.

For twelve years, Isabel joined Alice for a week or more in January or February at Alice’s waterfront timeshare in La Jolla, California. Attracted by California and tired of shoveling snow, in 2013 Isabel packed up her belongings and moved to the Rossmoor community in Walnut Creek, California, where she would spend the rest of her life.

The concept of end-of-life choice had interested her for many years. She had often discussed it with friends. It became more than just an idea when in April 2021 she noticed that something was amiss with her right hand, which was not following her directions when she was typing. Searching the Internet, she concluded that the symptom was serious enough to go to the ER. Days later, she was astonished to hear that she had terminal lung cancer metastasized to her brain.

Isabel had many, many friends. In California, besides Alice in La Jolla, she had reconnected with Muriel, a fellow translator, and met Sandy, Muriel’s friend. The four of them bonded as a group. Their emails in between visits became increasingly frequent, and through the summer of 2021 many of their messages were being shared as a foursome.

When Isabel learned of her diagnosis, the rest of the group started to write almost every day and sometimes several times a day. Their goal was to lift her spirits, but she turned out to be the real cheerleader with her delightful wit. They wrote about many topics: politics, Covid-19, advances in medicine, the vagaries of language, daily adventures, stories from their past, and many more.

The passages from the emails collected here are the tip of the iceberg. Much of the material in their frequent correspondence has been omitted in order to focus on Isabel’s journey and the thoughts and challenges that led her to choose to end her life on October 25, 2021.

The idea here has been to include enough details to create a picture of her sharp mind, sense of humor, and the challenges she was facing, as well as to provide at least rough sketches of the other three participants and examples of the ways in which the group supported her through her process.

Prelude

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A year before Isabel’s diagnosis, the subject of end-of-life choice had come up in the following email exchanges with Muriel.

April 4, 2020

Muriel wrote:

Hi Isabel,

I’m really anxious to get to the point where they know the actual occurrence/location of most of the Covid-19 cases. Until then, I intend to avoid venturing forth very much. I have a lot of projects to finish. Ultimately, I hope that I’m done in by a much less painful form, such as pneumonia. I want a gentle transition.

Love,

Muriel

Isabel wrote:

Hi Muriel,

Good for you doing all that creative work. If you do decide to go out at 90 or so, it will be not with a whimper but with a bang! Way to go! I’ve been thinking lately that if this virus gets really bad – and we still don’t know whether the curve is going to go up or down – I would cheerfully volunteer for what (lacking a better term) I call pre-terminal assisted euthanasia. In other words, if I get sick with The Thing, I want to go somewhere where they’ll help me over the threshold, and leave my bed and ventilator – which I emphatically do NOT want – for someone who wants them.

I even got as far as calling Compassion and Choices, an organization that advocates for assisted suicide in states that don’t allow it yet. The lady who called back listened to my idea, which she said was common among pre-terminal people (e.g., someone with cancer who knows the writing is on the wall but isn’t in pain yet). However, C&C isn’t able/willing to advocate even for that, although they think it’s a good idea, because their resources are going to the more urgent advocacy for people in intolerable pain who want a comfortable send-off.

I’d like to get my idea floated around as a possibility although I don’t see much chance of it getting traction. I don’t know how to start, however.

Muriel wrote:

We’ve talked before about pneumonia being the old man’s friend. If I could, I would choose that.

Two of my dearest support group friends opted for assisted suicide. Their deaths were extra hard on the ones left behind. One, who had lung cancer, did the bag thing over his head with the help of the Hemlock Society of San Diego. In the other case, she had learned she had an intestinal cancer but didn’t tell anyone about her plans. She took some pills. In both cases, the