The Brittany Maynard Fund remains as a token of the woman that gave the institution its name: the last days of Brittany Maynard's life were filled with joy and saw her surrounded by loved ones.
A champion in the fight for aid in dying (assisted suicide for the terminally ill), Maynard became famous after posting a famous letter on CNN called "My right to death with dignity at 29," which caused an uproar in media outlets all over the world, allowing her to create the Brittany Maynard Fund in an attempt to raise awareness in pro of her euthanasia cause.
According to USA Today, she spent her last days working up her Bucket List along with her husband Dan Diaz and the rest of her family, doing everything she wanted to from life - at just 29, because time had been cut short for her due to a brain tumor that would end her life anyway, after having received a prognosis earlier this year saying she only had six months left to live.
That's where the idea of the Brittany Maynard Fund first came to her. Not every state in the US allows assisted suicide for terminal patients, but she wanted to go in a dignified way instead of waiting to die in a hospital after months of chemo and radiation that would destroy her spirits.
Along with nonprofit organization Compassion & Choices, she created the Brittany Maynard Fund to help raise awareness and lobby in pro of the federal legalization of aid in death for terminal patients.
According to the website for the Brittany Maynard Fund, for now, there are only five states that allow this practice: Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.
A few weeks ago and before her death, website Christian Post gave an account of what Brittany had done in the last few days of her life, as she crossed off items from her Bucket List. The last item in her list was a visit to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, which she had always dreamt of doing - and so she went there, after people who supported her cause raised money through the Brittany Maynard Fund so she could see the things she loved.
Determined as she was to end her life on November 1st (which she did), Brittany went on to do the things she wanted with her loved ones up to her very last days on Earth, in spite of naysayers, who went on to claim that the Brittany Maynard Fund was a morally wrong due to the fact that she wasn't respecting the gift of life.
According to Yahoo! Health, she was definitely at peace with her decision as the moment approached, though she wasn't completely sure at first if she'd gone through the assisted suicide on the day she had first planned, November 1st.
Maynard first heard about her cancer at the beginning of 2014, and, after seeing different options along with her family, came to realize that she would be dying soon anyway, in spite of possible treatments - and she'd do so in a most debilitating fashion, losing her strength as her husband of little over a year and the rest of her family would see her suffering and suffer themselves.
As the date approached, she said she could potentially change the date, but ultimately decided otherwise, posting messages on the Brittany Maynard Fund website and Facebook pages to say farewell to her loved ones and all of those who had supported her desire to end her life in her own terms.
Her trip to the Grand Canyon was documented on the Brittany Maynard Fund's website, following a set of videos where she also talked about how she wished her husband Dan Diaz would move on and start a family after she passed away.
Supporters of the cause can now enter the Brittany Maynard Fund's website to give their condolences to her family.
