They were just kids when they got married. In their decades of love, Betty Richardson imagined how her life with Don would end. On the water somewhere. With wine. Together.

“Mom always told me, ‘If either one of us finds out we’re sick, we’ll take a whole bottle of pills, rent a boat on a lake, drink a bottle of wine, and we’ll go listening to good music,’ ” said Vikki Miller. “She said if we ever disappear, that’s where you’ll find us. She said that for years.”

But this year, cancer swiftly overtook Betty Richardson of Maineville, and as she lay dying, she directed her daughter to work to give other terminally ill people a choice, to relieve suffering, to avoid indignity and impoverishment, to decide how to meet death.

© The Enquirer/Anne Saker Vikki Miller of Milford says her mother Betty Richardson, in photo, urged her to push for an Ohio law that would allow Don Richardson of Maineville, holding the photo, and Betty were married 59 years. Betty died in March of small-cell lung cancer.

“A lot of people don’t believe in it because of their religion,” said Don Richardson, Betty’s husband and Miller’s father. “Why would they put their religion on us? Why should they say what we can be able to do?”

In keeping with Betty Richardson’s wishes, Miller and her father now volunteer with Ohio End of Life Options, a Cleveland nonprofit pushing Ohio to offer an avenue available in parts of America: The right to ask a doctor for a lethal prescription and, when the moment arrives, to use it.

The state of aid-in-dying

Last year, a survey by Ohio End of Life Options found 87% of Ohioans believe terminally ill patients “should be allowed to die in as humane and dignified a manner as they see fit.” The support cut across partisan lines with large majorities.

Medicine allows people to live longer with cancer, heart disease and other afflictions. But the consequences include whopping medical bills and a lower quality of life. A 2017 paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine said, “The emphasis by medicine and society on intervention and cure has sometimes come at the expense of good end-of-life care.”

In 1997, Oregon became the first state to enact a medically assisted suicide law. The movement has spread to California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Montana, Maine, New Jersey, Vermont and Washington state.

The fundamentals of these laws are the same. At least two doctors must certify that a patient has six months or less to live. The patient must obtain lethal drugs in person and must administer them without help.

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Lisa Vigil Schattinger of Cleveland founded Ohio End of Life Options after her stepfather exercised his right in 2014 in Oregon. She has recruited notables such as former assistant U.S. attorney Anne Rowland, who published an essay on the subject in June.

Last year, Democratic state Sen. Chaleta Tavares introduced Ohio’s first aid-in-dying bill in the General Assembly. The legislation did not get out of committee, and Tavares, D-Columbus, was term-limited from running again.

Filmmakers are tackling the subject bluntly with dramatic films and documentaries such as "How to Die in Oregon" in 2011

The American Medical Association is opposed to aid-in-dying laws. The 2017 essay in the Annals of Internal Medicine said aid in dying “is problematic given the nature of the patient-physician relationship, affects trust in the relationship and in the profession and fundamentally alters the medical profession's role in society.”

Ohio End of Life Options is recruiting Ohioans who have cared for dying loved ones to talk with medical personnel. On the front lines is Betty Richardson, through her daughter and her husband.

‘She wanted this right to die’

In 1959, Don Richardson met Betty May Johnston on a street in Loveland, and, “I just had this feeling that I really, really liked her.” When they married, he was 16, she 15.

© Provided When Betty Richardson learned in August 2018 that she was terminally ill with lung cancer, her daughter Vikki Miller of Milford arranged for a family photograph. Betty is seated on the left with great-granddaughter Lillian. Betty's husband Don is seated right with great-grandson Shane. Standing from left are Donald, the couple's son; Vikki Miller, their daughter, her husband Tim, and their daughter Ashley.

Don became a truck mechanic and later a fleet manager. They settled in Maineville, and Betty was a devoted, vivacious wife and mother. She loved the water, and in their nearly 60 years together, the couple went on 10 cruises.

Their two children grew up, and the family stayed close as grandchildren and great-grandchildren came along.

In July 2018, Vikki Miller, an education consultant with the Ohio Department of Education who lives in Milford, planned a getaway to Chicago with her mother. But Betty said no. A nagging cough had gotten worse. Then the cough brought up blood.

The diagnosis was small-cell lung cancer, brutally aggressive. “She was a strong lady, just blunt,” Don said. “She looked at the doctor and said, ‘OK, how long do I have?’ He said four to six months. And six months later, she was gone.”

She declined all treatment. She grew too weak to walk in the neighborhood, but she taught Don how to pay bills. She warned Vikki not to let Don spend the rest of his life in front of the TV.

She worried about the expense of her illness and the advancing levels of care she would need. “That’s one reason she wanted this right to die, to die with dignity,” Miller said. “She didn’t want to put her children, her family through this.”

Betty Richardson didn’t have the strength for the ending she had long imagined with Don, with music and wine, together, on a body of water. He laughed softly at the memory. “That was her plan for both of us.”

In her last weeks, under hospice care, her mother gave her daughter an assignment. “She said, ‘You do a lot with government stuff. I bet you can get this law passed.’ ”

She died in March at 74. A short time later, Miller enlisted in Ohio End of Life Options. She handed out literature at the Ohio Association of Family Physicians meeting in Columbus in August. In October, she’ll be at the Ohio Nurses Association gathering in Cincinnati.

So far, Miller said, less than a handful of people have turned away from her. A doctor told her the whole idea was against his religion. Another man questioned her in an argumentative way. But, “Everybody else was 100% totally on board.”

For a while after Betty died, Don did sit in front of the TV. In the summer, Miller drove her father around to find something to do, on his own. The volunteer coordinator at Bethesda North Hospital said they needed a driver for the shuttle bus. Don took the job.

“This is where I want to be,” he said. “It’s been great.”

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This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Terminally ill mom's challenge to daughter: Bring aid in dying to Ohio