When I tell people about my mom’s Alzheimer’s, most people are confident this will never happen to them. Why not? Because they have an Exit Plan.
The plan is usually an intentional overdose, or something more fanciful like walking into the woods in subzero temperatures. In Michael Wolff’s 2012 essay “A Life Worth Ending,” the author describes his mother’s prolonged suffering from dementia, then reaches a conclusion. “Meanwhile, since, like my mother, I can’t count on someone putting a pillow over my head, I’ll be trying to work out the timing and details of a do-it-yourself exit strategy.