When my dad, Brian Moffett, retired, he had a plan — he always had a plan. A second act of life filled with travel, projects, and long conversations with old friends.
But life had a different plan.
Shortly after retiring, my dad began to stumble, slur his words, lose the steady strength that had defined him for decades. Eventually, the words no family ever wants to hear arrived: ALS. A death sentence. Not a quick one. A slow, suffocating one.
From the moment he was diagnosed, my father fought to hold onto dignity. He learned how to use a motorized wheelchair. He worked with an end-of-life doula. He banked his voice so that even when he could no longer speak, we could still hear him tell his stories.
He threw himself into advocacy, fighting for New York to pass the Medical Aid in Dying Act — the law that would have allowed him to meet death with control, surrounded by the people he loved most. He knew how he was going to deal with the pain and suffering and how he was going to try to mute the fear that enveloped him. The fear of dying, yes, but even more the fear of not being able to control the pain and suffering.
He wanted to be the first New Yorker to use the law. That was his plan. But New York let him down.
Instead, he spent his final months trapped in a body that betrayed him, terrified of what each day would bring. Weeks spent fighting insurance companies that decided he was no longer worth rehabilitating.
Days when he couldn’t feed himself, bathe himself, or even move without assistance. Nights vomiting, in excruciating pain, unable to find peace even with hospice care. Endless fear that he would die gasping for air, alone, suffering. And in the end, his fear was realized.
Despite traveling across the country every three weeks to care for him, I wasn’t there the night my dad died. I was preparing to return just a few days later to celebrate his birthday — but he didn’t make it. I got a call at 9 p.m. on a Friday night. Dad had died.
If my dad had been allowed to use medical aid in dying, I could have been there. I could have held his hand. I could have sung to him, just like he had asked me to. I could have given him the peace he deserved. Instead, he died alone.
And I live with that grief every day. Sometimes in my dreams I see him and he tells me he loves me. But there are days I wake up with a pillow damp with sweat, replaying that moment, imagining how scared and isolated he must have felt. Did he think I abandoned him on his last day? Did he think I stopped loving him?
If my Staten Island dad had lived a few miles west — across the Outerbridge Crossing into New Jersey — he could have had a peaceful death. If he had been in Vermont, or Oregon, or California — states that respect the right to choose — he could have died surrounded by love, not fear.
But because New York lawmakers refused to act, my father suffered needlessly. And he wasn’t alone.
Every year that this bill is delayed, more New Yorkers are forced to endure deaths filled with terror, pain, and indignity. This isn’t about politics. It’s about mercy. It’s about allowing terminally ill people to meet death the way they lived: with agency, with dignity, with love.
Passing the Medical Aid in Dying Act won’t stop death. Death is coming, regardless. What it will do is stop unnecessary suffering.
For my dad, it’s too late. But it’s not too late for the thousands of New Yorkers who are still fighting for the right to die with dignity and without suffering. If New York State senators believe in compassion, if they believe in mercy, if they believe in love — they must do what the Assembly has done: pass the Medical Aid in Dying Act.
Do it for Brian Moffett. It doesn’t matter that he was a dad, a brother, a friend, a man, a New Yorker, a covered-bridge aficionado, or a music lover. What mattered was that he was a person existing in this world, in an age where we have modern marvels that allow us to live, and die, with autonomy and peace.
Senators, do your job. Pass the Medical Aid in Dying Act. Do it now.
Moffett grew up on Staten Island and now lives with his husband and three cats in Portland, Ore.
