When Joanne Kelly's husband, Alan-overcome by a rare, fatal neurodegenerative illness?decides he has endured all the suffering he can handle and wants to end his life using Medical Aid in Dying, Joanne is torn between not wanting him to suffer and not wanting him to die. Can she help him achieve the tender death he envisions? And should she?

As a kid, Joanne Tubbs Kelly moved around a lot, but she always felt at home when she had her nose stuck in a book. As an adult, she provided marketing communications services to high-tech companies. Now that she’s retired, she lives in Boulder in the home she and her husband, now deceased, remodeled from top to bottom. She delights in puttering in her garden and walking and hiking where she can wallow in the beauty of Boulder’s Flatirons and Colorado’s high peaks. Whenever she’s not in her garden or out walking, you can usually find her up to her old tricks: hiding out somewhere with her nose stuck in a book.