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Martine Partridge chose to die on a Sunday.

The date had a certain symmetry, she felt, since she had been born on a Sunday nearly 40 years earlier.

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Symmetry was meaningful to Partridge, who loved literature and poetry, classical music and yoga.

There was no such beauty or balance in cancer.

The disease had instead wrought its own capricious timetable, irrevocably depriving Partridge of her most basic pleasures.

The enjoyment of food. Walking her little dog Henry. Hugging loved ones without medical devices getting in the way.

Partridge was determined the disease would not take the one last freedom she possessed. The ability to choose the manner of her final moments of life.

“Accessing medical assistance in death grants me this desire, this mercy. It allows me to pass over on my terms,” she wrote in a letter to family and friends, excerpts of which were shared at her memorial service.

“Disease is so damn unpredictable and as things progress, I am at least empowered by the notion that I get to say when and how my last breath will be taken.”