WATCH: Jil Finnegan’s emotional goodbye to loved ones in her final days. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)
OAKLAND — Jil Finnegan wanted to die on the anniversary of the day she married Geoff Protz 14 years ago.
The pact that the petite environmental engineer made with her husband wasn’t meant to be macabre. If anything, the couple agreed, it was a way to complete the circle of their marriage vows.
Not until death would they part. And they would get to pick the time and the place.
Most importantly, they believed, getting a doctor to prescribe a lethal dose of medication would end the incessant pain from the cancerous tumors that had lodged against her vocal cords and spread to her neck, back and stomach. The methadone and oxycodone that Jil, 55, took three times a day to dull the pain was now only sending her into a stupor and forcing her to sleep much of the day.
So Jil and Geoff decided she would become one of hundreds of terminally ill Californians who have asked their doctors to allow them to die peacefully through the state’s End of Life Option Act. The controversial law, signed two years ago by Gov. Jerry Brown, a former Jesuit seminarian who agonized over whether he was doing the right thing, took effect in June 2016.
For Jil Finnegan, it was the chance to embrace an ending that reflected the way she had sought to live her every day: in control. And for her closest circle of friends and family, it was a profound lesson in how this new law is changing the way we say goodbye.
Only a handful of Californians who have chosen to use the law have been willing to share their stories with the public. Jil — who decided in third grade to begin spelling her name with one “l’’ instead of two, just to be different — allowed a Bay Area News Group reporter and photographer to document her final days, saying she hoped people could better understand the law through her story.
“I cannot imagine not having the law,’’ Jil said four days before her death, reaching out to pet her beloved dogs, a mastiff-shepherd mix named Tucker and a chocolate Labrador retriever named Bailey. “It would be terrifying.’’
‘Celebration of life and death’
It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-September, and she was lying on her side on a living room sofa, covered in a dark blue comforter.
As she spoke, Jil often ran out of breath. She became concerned because she knew she needed to save her energy, for this was the day she and Geoff had decided they would host a combined belated 52nd birthday party for him and farewell party for her.
On the Evite, they had called it “a celebration of life and death.’’
Exhausted, Jil smiled as a string of friends and neighbors made their way inside the couple’s Oakland bungalow on their way to the backyard where she would later meet with each one to say goodbye.
Many of them realized the end was near, yet only a handful knew she had decided that in just four days she would ingest a lethal drug her Stanford oncologist had prescribed under the right-to-die law.
The news stunned her mother-in-law, Eileen Protz, who broke down in tears.
“I didn’t know this was happening on Wednesday,’’ Protz said after regaining her composure. “I thought she was going to wait until she was in more pain.’’
Geoff’s sister, Jennifer Chow, had also just learned of the impending date. She stood with red-rimmed eyes in the living room, her hands shaking as she wiped away tears.
Jil got up a few times to join her two older sisters, Anne and Kate Finnegan, in the kitchen as they arranged lavender shortbread cookies. The siblings had traveled from Fort Bragg and Oregon to help with the party.
As the backyard began filling up with well-wishers, Tamara Thompson, a neighbor and close friend, pulled Tucker into her arms in the living room.
“Hey, Tucky. What are ya doin’, Mister Buttons? Tucky Buttons,’’ she cooed.
“I know this guy knows something,” Thompson said of the dog. “He’s known for a while that’s something’s wrong.’’
For one thing, Thompson said, Jil no longer had the energy to take her dogs on their daily walks around the block, much less on their cherished hikes in the East Bay hills.
“It’s been a long journey for her,’’ she said. “And, you know, hard — hard for her and hard for everybody around her to watch this happen. This is somebody who has always been extremely capable, extremely engaged in the community.’’
Over the years, Jil had turned her neighbors into a group of tight-knit friends. She organized litter pickups along the Interstate 580 exit near their homes, coordinated annual emergency-response drills and helped build two miles of trails in nearby King Estate Open Space Park. And every September, she helped pull together the annual neighborhood block party.
She was always in control — until the cancer.
“I think she is incredibly brave,’’ Thompson said. “I don’t think God wants us to suffer. If we are dying and there is something that could be done to ease our suffering, I think it’s compassionate.”
‘Shutting down’
Outside, the party was already in full swing. Tables were filled with everything from Jil’s favorite salmon on a plank to a chocolate birthday sheet cake.
But Jil was nowhere to be seen. She had retreated to her bed to rest.
Earlier, many at the party had remarked at how healthy she looked. Nothing about her appearance suggested she was dying.
“It’s been deceptive,” a pensive Geoff said. “Inside, her body is shutting down.”
Just recently, Geoff said, his wife had experienced horrible pain — so bad that they had to contact the hospice nurse who had been on call for the last four months, to readjust Jil’s medications.
That incident had frightened her, Geoff said, and had also sealed her resolve to use the law.
In recent days, Geoff said, she was having trouble swallowing. Her stomach was swollen, and she couldn’t taste her food.
But halfway through the Saturday party, Jil summoned all the energy she could muster, rose from her bed and made her way outside to join her guests, who cheered her arrival.
As much as he loved seeing her, Danny Hakim, one of Jil’s co-workers, couldn’t get over the fact that he knew the day his friend was going to die.
“I’ve never had that experience,” he said. “It’s almost like an execution — I don’t know what else to call it. It’s weird, right?’’
‘You’ve Got Us Friends’
About an hour later, as Jil sat in a chair next to her husband, the 40 or so guests crowded around them to sing James Taylor’s “You’ve Got A Friend,’’ changed to “You’ve Got Us Friends.’’
Siblings Anne, Kate and Tim Finnegan sat at a picnic table nearby and watched as Jil was embraced by the partygoers.
“I have been impressed and amazed with the grace with which she has handled this,’’ said Kate, her eyes filling with tears as she reminisced.
Decades ago, Jil had grown up in Lodi after her parents, Edward and Gail, moved the family from Lancaster, Ohio. But Jil blazed her own trail, moving out before she finished high school and bouncing around for a few years before getting an engineering degree at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. She eventually ended up back in the Bay Area, working for a large engineering firm.
A welding class at San Francisco City College in 1999 changed her life. That’s where she met Geoff.
Jil was interested in creating metal yard art. Geoff, a mechanic who specializes in German cars, had enrolled to improve his welding skills. She was 5-foot-1 and a few years older. He was 6-foot-4 and attracted to her green eyes and strong personality. He was hooked after she agreed to “rough it” on a camping trip in Calistoga.
The couple married in 2003. They tried to have children, but couldn’t. So they threw their energy into working on their house and yard. They traveled to Southeast Asia and around the U.S. She turned her neighbors into an extended family.
Then in 2010 during a trip to India with her sister Anne, Jil spotted blood in her urine. Alarmed, Anne urged her to see a doctor as soon as she got home. The diagnosis: ovarian cancer.
Little more could be done
Jil had a hysterectomy and underwent chemotherapy. Though her cancer went into remission, she always believed it would come back.
“She told me she didn’t think she would ever make it to 60,’’ Hakim said.
In late 2015, when the disease resurfaced, Jil again underwent chemotherapy, then radiation, and even took part in a clinical drug trial. But nothing worked, and the drug left her with sores in her mouth and blisters on her hands and feet. The cancer was spreading.
Last fall, her oncologist told her there was little more that could be done. So the two began to discuss California’s new right-to-die law.
“She just let out this huge sigh of relief, because she didn’t have to continue with any further treatments,’’ recalled Thompson, who had accompanied Jil to the appointment.
Still, with each passing day, the clock seemed to be ticking faster, and when the pain surfaced and the powerful medications made her so sleepy she could no longer enjoy life, she started preparing for the end.
“I’m a scaredy cat,’’ she said about the agony that she knew lay ahead.
She knew it was possible she could live several more weeks, but she wasn’t interested. Not when she knew that a few gulps of a fatal prescription drug — already pre-mixed in a bottle for her convenience — would set her free.
“I’m a control freak,’’ she said. “I want to have the prescription there.’’
Shelley Siegel, a friend and neighbor who often marveled at how normal and healthy Jil looked, had tried to encourage her to find whatever joy she could in the time she had left.
On the day of the party, Siegel showed Jil an article about a woman who suffered from a chronic disease but was striving to find new meaning even as her health wore down.
“That woman has more time,’’ she told Siegel as she handed her back the article. “I don’t.’’
‘KaPow’ on the calendar
On the calendar in her kitchen, Jil had marked Sept. 20 with the word “KaPow’’ in a thick black marker. She had already begun giving away favorite clothes and jewelry to friends.
Twenty-four hours before she planned to ingest the fatal medication, she and Geoff drove to Ocean Beach in San Francisco to release some of the ashes of a friend from her punk rock days. Jil told her husband that she wanted her ashes spread in places where they had often hiked.
For the final goodbye, she invited about a dozen friends, her sister Anne, brother Dan and Geoff’s mother.
Inside the living room that day, the group ate chips and dip and passed the time talking about everything from her dogs to an upcoming cancer fundraiser at Mills College to Dan’s life in France.
“I’m tired and a little antsy — I think that’s just the cancer,’’ she said after stepping outside for a few minutes on her front porch. A small, crown-shaped floral wreath and peach-colored sash hung from her front door.
She dismissed any notion that she was being courageous.
“I feel a little wimpy — like I’m avoiding all the potential pain,” Jil said. “But that’s why I’m taking advantage of it.”
At that point, she asked everyone but her close friends to leave the house.
‘I love you guys so much’
Thompson and Geoff later described to a reporter what happened next:
When Jil returned to the living room, the group played charades at her suggestion. She wanted to hurry things up, but Geoff wanted to slow down the inevitable.
At 1:30 p.m., Jil walked into her kitchen and took her anti-nausea medication. She would have to wait an hour before she could ingest the lethal drug.
It began to rain lightly outside. So in a moment of delight, Jil walked out to look up at the sky, feeling the drops of rain splash on her face and her palms. A hospice nurse was on her way to oversee the process and answer questions.
Finally, the hour had arrived. Jil drank a glass of milk, then padded in her bare feet to the pale yellow bedroom she and Geoff had shared for the last 14 years. Faux floral vines hung on the wall, lit up with tiny white lights.
Dressed in dark blue jeans and a periwinkle-colored long-sleeve top, she climbed onto the bed, where she was joined by Geoff, while Tucker and Bailey jumped up on the comforter and snuggled beside them. As she leaned forward to hug those around her, she told them all, “I love you guys so much.”
The heaviness of the moment was interrupted with some light humor when it took three people to open up the plastic bottle that contained her medication.
Her friend Pam Wonson set a timer for 90 seconds and told Jil she had to drink the contents quickly or risk falling asleep before the entire bottle was consumed.
Jil swallowed the liquid — it tasted bitter and awful, she informed everyone gathered around her bed. She started to become groggy and a bit delirious.
“Wow, I’m really high,” she said. A bit later, she looked up and asked drowsily: “Isn’t it funny how it turns out that we all have the best dogs in the world?”
‘It’s OK. Let go, Jil’
As she fell asleep, Geoff lovingly patted her head. Many in the room started to cry.
Yet the quick exit Jil had sought would elude her for another four and a half hours.
At first, she took heavy, jagged breaths, but as time wore on they became more shallow. Geoff and the others looked on worriedly, checking with the hospice nurse, who assured them she was in no pain, and that it could take up to 24 hours before she would pass.
Time dragged on. Then her next-door neighbor Lisa Brink, who was standing by the bed, told her: “It’s OK. Let go, Jil. We’re holding you in a bubble of love, but don’t let it hold you here.”
At 7:02 p.m. Jil drew her last breath.
Geoff said he then asked to be alone with his wife and, after closing the bedroom door, he broke down. He told her to rest in peace and to “be at one with the universe.’’
For several hours after her death, Jil lay on the bed, her hands crossed gently over her stomach, holding the small floral wreath. The guests stayed to comfort each other and toast Jil — in the spirit of an Irish wake. Geoff invited other friends and neighbors to stop by to bid their last farewell.
Finally, a man from the cremation service arrived to remove Jil’s body.
No need to extend the suffering
In the days after her death, Jil’s friends and family were left to reflect on what they had experienced, watching her slip away on her appointed day. Some found it serene but surreal. Others were struck by how vital it was to have so many loved ones supporting Jil at the end. Her mother-in-law is still working through her feelings.
The impact of the way Jil died was especially powerful for her brother Tim, who is suffering from terminal lung cancer.
“From what I’ve heard, and from what my oncologist has told me, the final months are not going to be pleasant,’’ said the 63-year-old machinist, who lives in Santa Clara.
For now, he said, he is trying to extend his life with whatever treatments are available. But he knows now from his sister’s experience that there is another option.
Geoff said he felt relieved that her wish had been honored through the new law.
“People should have the opportunity to spare themselves and their loved ones from prolonged suffering,’’ he said. “It could have gotten so bad in the end.’’
The end is different now in California.
“It’s something we are all going to have to get used to,” said Siegel, the neighbor who had encouraged Jil to treat every day as a gift, “because it’s a new and more honest way of dealing with death.’’
Jil Finnegan’s memorial service will be held at noon on Sunday, Oct. 15, at Leona Lodge in Oakland, 4444 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Donations may be made in her memory to Oakland Animal Services, 1101 29th Ave., Oakland, 94601.
