Ten years ago this month, I was at my 29-year-old partner Chrissy’s bedside as she took her last breath.

Her four-year journey through a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis brought some of the worst moments of my life, but also some of the best. In the hardest of times, we learned to find joy in the simplest of life's pleasures — like watching a sunset or taking a bike ride. Unfortunately, however, when I think back on the far too short a time Chrissy and I shared, it’s her final days that still haunt me.

In the last few months of Chrissy’s journey, we learned about medical aid in dying as an end-of-life option. Medical aid in dying enables a terminally ill adult with less than six months to live to request a prescription from a doctor that will allow them to die peacefully in their sleep. It was a choice Chrissy wanted to pursue.

But that option was not available to her because of her zip code. Medical aid in dying was — at the time and still today — not legal in New York. So, instead of being able to take medication herself to pass away peacefully, Chrissy’s parents and I were the ones who had to administer increasing doses of morphine and other pain medications in a futile effort to minimize her suffering.

Standing at her bedside and watching her struggle, I wished with........

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