For a few days in early August, the woman’s husband saw a brightness return to her eyes, the brightness of hope. It was hope that her suffering — the words she could not say and thoughts she could not express, the many stumbles and falls, the headaches — would finally end.

Robin Granat’s hope rested in death. She hoped to decide how, and when, she died. She wanted to take medication to end her life, using an option made newly available by New Jersey’s aid-in-dying law.

But just eight days after the law took effect on Aug. 1, a Bergen County doctor launched a faith-based legal challenge, and a judge imposed a restraining order that put a hold on the law. It set in motion a seesaw that thwarted Granat's plans, compounding the pain and anxiety of her looming death from incurable brain cancer.

Since then, an appellate court lifted the hold on the law, but Granat’s condition has deteriorated rapidly. She was admitted to an inpatient hospice on Aug. 23, less than a week after she stated her wish for lethal medication to her doctor. Her ability to speak has devolved to sentence fragments and single words: “Yes,” “No,” “Help me.”

It is not the death she wanted.

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'Help me'

They met at a party in New York in the 1980s, she a petite Rhode Islander and former competitive figure skater who could really sing; he an equally athletic New Yorker at the start of his career as a psychotherapist.

He was a trained listener, and she loved to talk.

“When we were dating, she said she’d rather lose her vision than her voice,” Jay Granat said. They married 31 years ago. Twenty-four years ago, they had twins.

A week ago, they sat side by side on the couch at their River Vale home as Jay Granat tried to figure out what Robin Granat, now 59, wanted to say.

“I want,” she said, and paused. A few seconds ticked by. Her eyes grew stern with concentration. “I want …" She moved her right hand up and down a few times, as if to hammer the words out.

She looked at Jay, searching for understanding. He leaned his head toward her, appearing to will himself to channel her thoughts.

“Help me,” she said.

“I’m trying,” he sighed.

Jay started to speak about the time in late 2017 when Robin, who used to sing in two Bergen County choral groups, came home from an Ars Musica Chorale rehearsal and complained about how complicated the music was. She was having a hard time learning her part, she told Jay at the time.

What composition was it? Jay couldn’t remember.

“Rachmaninoff!” Robin blurted out, smiling merrily at her momentary victory.

It was, in fact, Rachmaninoff’s greatest work, his “All Night Vigil.”

But by the day of the concert in November 2017, Robin was too ill to perform.

Looking back, Jay said her difficulty learning the music was an early warning sign.

Robin was soon diagnosed with glioblastoma, a brain tumor that had infiltrated the corpus callosum, which connects the brain's right and left hemispheres. The same type of tumor killed Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Vice President Joe Biden’s adult son, Beau.

The average life expectancy for glioblastoma patients is 15 to 16 months. Robin has lived 20 months.

Jay, a sports therapist, described their experience in boxing terms. In a ring, opponents can see a punch coming and steel themselves for the blow, he said.

After the diagnosis, Jay and Robin saw death coming.

Months of radiation, chemotherapy and experimental treatments followed. Robin quit her job managing a senior-living community of 200 residents in Teaneck. The tumor was stable, but she was losing her ability to speak. She couldn’t assemble the 300-piece jigsaw puzzle on her dining room table. She couldn’t slip her earrings through the piercings in her ears.

She chose to stop treatment in March.

And then Jay and Robin saw something else coming: They could have control over her death. They could choose when to finally relieve her of the illness that had stolen her ability to skate, sing and speak.

New Jersey's aid-in-dying law gave them that hope.

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Eight days of hope

The new law allowing doctors to prescribe life-ending medication to terminally ill New Jersey residents was intended to give patients who are within six months of death an option to end their suffering. It was signed by Gov. Phil Murphy on April 12.

Legalizing medical aid in dying in the Garden State did not come easily.

Lawmakers debated the measure for nearly seven years before passing it this year by a single vote in each chamber. Murphy, a Catholic, was unusually personal when explaining the reasons he signed the measure.

"After careful consideration, internal reflection and prayer, I have concluded that, while my faith may lead me to a particular decision for myself, as a public official I cannot deny this alternative to those who may reach a different conclusion," Murphy wrote in a signing statement in April.

Although nearly two-thirds of New Jersey residents supported the measure, according to the latest Rutgers-Eagleton Poll in 2015, debate on the issue was contentious.

Supporters argued that sick people should have the right to end their own suffering. Opponents warned of inadequate safeguards for vulnerable residents and feared that the law would be abused by insurance companies that would rather pay for a single dose of deadly medicine than lengthy treatment.

The law took effect on Aug. 1 — 19 months after Granat’s deadly diagnosis.

Eight days later, Yosef Glassman, a Bergenfield doctor who specializes in geriatrics, filed a lawsuit arguing that the measure was unconstitutional. Then a Superior Court judge imposed a temporary restraining order that prevented doctors from acting on the law. This week, a pair of higher-court decisions lifted that restraint but allowed the doctor’s lawsuit to continue.

Story continues below the timeline.

A lawmaker already has introduced legislation to repeal the law. The bill's sponsor, Assemblyman Robert Auth, is a Republican from the 39th District — the district that includes the Granats’ River Vale address.

The aid-in-dying law says, among other things, that terminally ill patients must make their request for lethal medication three times: twice verbally at least 15 days apart, and once in writing at least 48 hours before getting a prescription.

Robin and Jay made an appointment for the first visit — when she would declare her intentions verbally for the first time — on Aug. 19, four days after the restraining order was imposed on the law.

It wasn't supposed to end like this

“I want to take the medication to end my life,” Robin told her doctor that day. She’d rehearsed the sentence like a middle-schooler studying for a Spanish exam, struggling to get each word out in the right order. Those 10 words could change her life. They could end it.

Over the next days, her speech slipped. She offered no more than one-word answers to questions. Then, on Aug. 23, she got stuck on a single, looping syllable after her husband asked her a simple, yes-or-no question.

"Bababababa," she babbled. It went on for 90 seconds and felt like a lifetime, Jay said. It terrified them both.

He called a hospice nurse. An ambulance came.

The beautiful singer he had married could talk no more. The competitive figure skater, who’d balanced on the ice just a year before, had to be carried out the door.

They never wanted it to get to this point. They had discussed death dozens of times. Planned for it.

On a Tuesday evening in June, they had sat at their kitchen table as Jay recorded a video of Robin stating what she wanted to do — how she wanted to die. Instead, her hope was delayed by the legal challenge.

Otherwise, “We would not be here now,” Jay said after Robin was admitted to the inpatient hospice last weekend. “We would have circumvented this, if the law had been in effect. This wouldn’t have happened.”

His wife will remain at the hospice until the end, he said Thursday. Moving her would be dangerous. She is safe and comfortable.

She may have a painless death. But it will not be when and how she wanted it.