In lieu of our regular festivities recognizing Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) this year, on November 2 we launched a video honoring deceased advocates, commemorating the 6th anniversary of supporter Brittany Maynard’s death and urging legislators nationwide to pass medical aid-in-dying laws. 

Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday celebrated on the first and second days of November, is a time when families celebrate the lives of loved ones who have died by honoring them with beautiful gifts, colorful altars and visits to their graves. The celebration, designed to embrace death as a part of the human experience in a vibrant and festive way, is also a great opportunity to talk about the importance of communicating with our doctors and loved ones about what healthcare options we want at the end of our life, especially if we become too sick to speak for ourselves.

For the last four years, Compassion & Choices has honored the memory of our advocates in celebrations at locations throughout the country. This year, in light of the global pandemic, supporters are remembered in a different way: with collected clips and photos celebrating their lives. “People shouldn’t have to unnecessarily suffer,” Compassion & Choices President and CEO Kim Callinan says in the video. “Somebody shouldn’t have to pick up their family and move cross-country in order to access a law. That’s a health equity issue.”

The release of the video comes just two months before state lawmakers start to launch 2021 legislative sessions in January and six years since the death of Brittany Maynard, the California woman who moved to Oregon in 2014 so she could die peacefully when she could no longer tolerate the suffering caused by a terminal brain tumor. Brittany inspired the passage of medical aid-in-dying laws since her death on Nov. 1, 2014, in six jurisdictions: California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.

“I can’t even tell you the amount of relief that it provides me to know that I don’t have to die the way that it’s been described to me, that my brain tumor would take me on its own,” Brittany says in the video.

Miguel Carrasquillo, a native Puerto Rican who lived in New York and Chicago, was only 35 when he too died from an aggressive and deadly brain tumor. Miguel, who referred to himself as the “Latino Brittany Maynard,” suffered horribly before his death in 2016. Miguel and Brittany had the same type of brain cancer.

“I’m the one who suffers every single day,” Miguel says in the video. “Headaches, back pains, electric shock all over your body, convulsions, seizures. I tell God that I need to go right now. I want the option to choose how I want to die.”

Amanda Villegas recalled the death of her late husband, Chris Davis, who suffered severely before he died of bladder cancer in 2019, denied access to medical aid in dying by a hospital’s bureaucratic policies despite the fact that the practice is authorized in California. “It was just inhumane the way we had to watch him die and the way he was mistreated,” she says in the video.

Fay Hoh Yin, an 87-year-old Brooklyn resident who died of incurable T-cell lymphoma in July used her last months to advocate for the passage of the Medical Aid in Dying Act in New York. “Most of us who are sick do not want to die,” Fay said in the video. “We want to live.”

Michael Saum, the first known transgender person to publicly advocate for medical aid-in-dying laws nationwide, died alone in a rehabilitation center in Southern California this year. “I am in constant pain,” he says in the video. 

Irisaida ‘Isa’ Mendez, a Florida advocate living with incurable cancer, spoke about the importance of planning for the end of life. “Let’s plan our life like the way you plan your wedding, you plan your birth, you plan your death,” she says in the video. “Don’t be afraid of talking about it; don’t be afraid of facing it.”

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