Where Good Girls Go to Die

On planning, burdens, and the beach I’m dying on.

Canva AI helped me to create this photo.

You may have noticed we’ve been spending some time with death lately.

My father’s passing. Mary McGreevy’s obituary obsession. Kacie the Death Doula on last week’s Substack Live, where the comments and messages told me we struck a nerve.

I want to acknowledge that, and I also want to tell you I’m not planning to rename this newsletter The Daily Obituary.

But I’ve stopped apologizing for where the writing takes me. And lately it keeps taking me here, to the edges of things, to the moments when the performance finally stops. And I think I know why.

Death is where the good girl rules go to get exposed.

You can fake your way through a lot of life. You can smile when you’re exhausted, shrink when you’re angry, say I’m fine when you are very much not fine. But you cannot performance-manage your way through dying.

Kacie told us about the good girl who dies without acknowledging what she wants. That made me realize I had been doing it too — not on my deathbed, but in my planning for it. And that’s what this essay is about.

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It was six long years.

Six long years of managing my mother’s every earthly need. After she ran away from her home, I knew my plan to keep her in familiar surroundings wouldn’t work. Especially not with my full-time job, one kid in high school and two in college, a new house and a new marriage.

I just couldn’t cut myself into any more pieces.

I had to find a place where she couldn’t elope — managed care lingo for a senior runaway. After visiting multiple facilities, I settled on a place that could manage dementia and her mental health needs.

Having both conditions meant she needed a lot of oversight. The staff assured me they could handle whatever behavior my mother exhibited. Immediately after moving in, my mother began packing all of her belongings from her new room that I’d just set up, and demanded to go home. Every time I visited her, she would beg to leave, her things often re-packed, and would try to follow me out through the locked doors. Sometimes the staff helped calm her; other times I was on my own.

Every visit was gut-wrenching as my nerves crescendoed the longer I sat there dreading my exit. My mother wasn’t the type to make new friends; her mind focused only on getting back home.

Her time in dementia care ended up being six years.

Much of her time there was rough. She had days when she fought with the staff, becoming violent, and had to be subdued. It was awful to hear screams when I entered the secured wing. I recognized who it was. I knew what her rage sounded like. One time after walking in and hearing her, I couldn’t cope and just turned around and left.

They do not pay aides and nurses nearly enough.

I held every medical staff member who took care of my mother with the highest regard. I had a team helping me. They did what I could not. I needed every single one of them.

My mom died two months into the pandemic, not from COVID, but from her disease. Watching the slow progression over six years had been terrifying and relentless. They say dying from dementia is like dying from a thousand paper cuts. They are right.

During and after my mom’s health odyssey, I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t go out this way. I don’t want an audience watching my mind and body deteriorate. At least my father died within three months of his lung cancer diagnosis. At the time it seemed too quick, but in retrospect, six years is an eternity. For the last year and a half of her life, she was on hospice, which was very confusing when she didn’t die right away like my dad did.

In the thick of my mom’s disease, I told my two oldest daughters to put a pillow over my face if that happened to me.

“MOM!”

Their shrieks assured me they wouldn’t be doing that.

There goes that option.

I totally understand the burden it would be to ask a third party to end my life for me. Instead, I’m putting my wishes in writing, like an Advanced Health Directive and a Medical Aid in Dying patient form, if it applied. (The MAID form with the proper authorization from doctors, allows you to take autonomy over your death.)

My living will is much more detailed than my parents’ was. For example, I put in a “do not hospitalize” statement in case I am already a diagnosed terminal patient from disease A, and then something unexpected, like disease B, tries to take me out.

I learned this lesson the hard way when my mother had sepsis while in the nursing home. The staff called an ambulance when they found her unconscious. The hospital doctors made her better so she could be a paying customer at the nursing home for another two years in a near-vegetative state.

No, thank you.

It’s all very morbid, but since you’ve made it this far, my conversation with Kacie on last week’s Substack Live stirred up some thoughts.

Death Doula Kacie said women are not done being good girls on their deathbeds. They are still managing everyone else’s comfort. They are apologizing for taking up space, even as they’re leaving it.

As I was writing all of this down for you— the detailed Living Will, the do-not-hospitalize clause, the Medical Aid in Dying paperwork I intend to get in order — I realized how very practical, very organized, very me, it all sounded.

And underneath all of it, if I’m being honest, was one quiet, driving thought:

I don’t want to be a burden.

Not: I want to live fully until I can’t.

Not: I want to die the way I actually want to die.

Just don’t make it hard for them. Don’t make it what it was for me.

That’s the good girl. She didn’t go anywhere. She just learned to file paperwork.

Here’s what I’m thinking about now.

There is a difference between planning and disappearing. Between taking care of things and making yourself small before anyone has even asked you to. Between I want to die on my own terms and I just don’t want to inconvenience anyone.

My paperwork is real. My wishes are real. But if I’m honest, I built most of them around my children’s workload, not my own peace.

And what does my peace actually look like? I know exactly. I’ve seen it in my mind a hundred times. A house with French doors thrown open to the beach, with sheer curtains lifting in the breeze. The smell of salt air. The sound of waves, and above them, the laughing of seagulls. Sand. Light. The ocean doing what it always does, indifferent and eternal, while I simply watch it and breathe.

That’s my death. That’s what I actually want. But I had to write an entire essay to find it.

Kacie sees women continue in their good girl roles until the very end. Not just planning. Apologizing. Managing. Keeping the mood light. Making sure everyone will be okay before they go.

The good girl doesn’t die. She just gets quieter.

So here’s the question I’m leaving with myself — and with you. When you imagine the end of your life, who are you picturing? Who is the plan actually for?

Because not wanting to be a burden is not the same thing as knowing what you want. And you are allowed — you have always been allowed — to want something for yourself. Even then. Especially then.

Let me know in the comments what your beautiful death would look like.