“Brian knew how to talk a person out of it. Debra, however, had thought things through. So who were we to judge whether her cognitive decline was sufficiently severe? Who were we to say that it needed to be severe for the exit to be — what, worth it? ‘She doesn’t want to lose her selfhood,’ Brian said. ‘She sees it happening.’ Brian believes that nobody wants to die, only sometimes they can’t live this way.” Katie Engelhart in California Sunday Magazine: Debra Koosed was diagnosed with dementia at 65. That’s when she decided she no longer wanted to live.