Woman Recounts Helping Both Parents Die by Medical Aid in Dying on the Same Day

On the morning of Friday, August 13, 2021, in Washington state, Eva and Druse Neumann sat holding hands, talking quietly, while their daughter Corinne Gregory and her husband stayed close by. Eva was 92 and Druse was 95. Within the hour, both would be dead, having taken lethal medication under Washington's Death with Dignity Act. Four years later, Gregory, a 61-year-old private chef from Port Ludlow, has told her story exclusively to People.

The Neumanns had lived in Los Angeles, where Eva worked as an office manager for a Toyota dealership and Druse for a commercial electrical supply company. After retiring, they moved to Washington to be nearer to family. Gregory describes a close, tight-knit household. Eva, despite staying active, had a long record of heart trouble, including a heart attack and surgery to place a stent. In May 2018 she was diagnosed with aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the valve that controls blood flow from the heart to the body.

Eva waited months before telling her daughter. Gregory recalls being sat down in a restaurant, and says it felt like a parent breaking the news that Santa isn't real, except this news was real. Doctors had given Eva roughly 18 months to two years without an invasive surgery. Eva decided against it, and even with the procedure there was no guarantee of more time. For years afterward she lived as normally as she could, and her health declined only slightly.

That changed in April 2021. Eva got up in the night to use the bathroom, stumbled in the dark over the coffee table, and struck her head on the sharp corner of a bookcase. Druse called Gregory in what she describes as complete panic, and she met them at the emergency room. Eva was hospitalized. A week later, Druse, who had a history of atrial fibrillation and transient ischemic attacks, called her slurring his words and half incoherent. Tests indicated he had probably had a stroke, and he was kept in the hospital too. Gregory says she suddenly had two parents in medical care.

Eva's physician, citing the fall and the aortic stenosis, suggested hospice, which generally means six months or less to live. Gregory was shocked; she saw her mother as full of sparkle. But she came to see the doctors' point about quality of life, saying her mother's existence was okay but not really living. Eva had never been afraid of death, and when she entered hospice in early June 2021 she chose medical aid in dying. Washington's law, in effect since 2008, lets residents with terminal illnesses take prescribed lethal medication themselves, without a physician administering it, which is what separates it from euthanasia.

Druse was distraught. One evening, after Eva had gone to bed, he told his daughter he was panicked about what would happen to him if she died first, and could not imagine wanting to go on without her. Though he had recovered from the stroke and did not initially qualify for hospice, he said he wanted to die alongside his wife. Gregory believes he had always feared dying but feared being left alone more. She spent days on the phone with hospice coordinators and doctors, calling the effort surreal, since she was in effect advocating for her father's death. By mid-June he qualified, based on his history of mini-strokes and the strong possibility of a stroke that would incapacitate him without killing him. She calls it a race.

The final weeks were spent on family dinners with their favorite foods, champagne, and childhood stories, which Gregory saw as a way to repay her parents. On July 27, the day before her birthday, a pharmacy courier delivered two stapled white packages, one for each parent. She asked if she could hug him and take his picture, and he agreed. She kept the packages on a shelf in her closet. The family joked about choosing a date that wouldn't spoil a holiday or birthday; Gregory floated Friday the 13th as a joke, and Eva said she could do that. They chose August 13.

The night before, Gregory hosted what they called the Last Happy Hour, with Druse's favorite appetizers and wine. Afterward she lay down beside her mother for a while. On the day, two counselors from the nonprofit End of Life Washington prepared the medication. The parents held hands and talked, music played, and they drank it, then shared a final toast of wine. About ten minutes later they fell asleep. Counselors judged them gone around 11:30 a.m., and a hospice nurse pronounced them dead near noon. That night Gregory sobbed. Grief counselors told her they had never seen a case of two patients dying together. She now speaks publicly, she says, to push for more open conversation about death.