Before she was diagnosed with bulbar-onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in February 2021, Cai Emmons was recognized as an award-winning novelist, playwright and teacher. But in the months before she died at 71, on Jan. 2, the Eugene-based Emmons also became known for a series of eloquent blog entries and essays she wrote about what it was like to live knowing that she had a fatal illness.
On her site, caiemmonsauthor.com, Emmons shared her thoughts about her diagnosis and her choices. In a blog entry posted at the end of November, 2022, Emmons wrote, “As many of you know, I plan to end my life by invoking Death With Dignity, the law in Oregon that allows people who are expected to die within six months to take their own lives by swallowing—or injecting into a feeding tube—a combination of lethal medicines…No one else is going to be a cheerleader in helping me toward death. My husband and son and friends and extended family support me, but I have to be the motive force.”
In a farewell newsletter, Emmons wrote to “friends and readers”: “It is January 1st, 2023 and I am planning to depart from life as I’ve known it through death with dignity on January 2, 2023. I have had a rewarding life and I love everyone who has been a part of it. Remember me with joy.”
Emmons grew up in New England, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University, and studied film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts degree. She also held a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction from the University of Oregon, and taught fiction and screenwriting at the U of O from 2002 to 2018.
As an author, Emmons began her career writing plays and screenplays, then focused on fiction. Her works, which won such honors as an Oregon Book Award, include the novels, “His Mother’s Son,” “The Stylist,” “Weather Woman,” “Sinking Islands,” “Unleashed,” “Livid” and “Vanishing,” a short story collection about which The Oregonian/OregonLive wrote, “The pull of these stories lies in their relatable situations: the friendship kept alive more out of a sense of duty than joy; the power of seeding self-doubt; the temptation of a new persona. They illustrate the choice we all must make: Write our own stories, or risk vanishing into someone else’s.”
New York-based filmmaker Sandra Luckow, who grew up in Oregon and who, like Emmons, attended Yale (where Luckow’s 1986 honors thesis film, “Sharp Edges,” was a documentary about skater Tonya Harding), is raising money via a GoFundMe campaign for a documentary about Emmons, which will chronicle the last several months of the writer’s life.
In her farewell newsletter, Emmons wrote to her friends and readers that “the timing of my demise is odd because my career is currently on the upswing,” adding that she was completing a new book, the documentary film was in production, there was interest in turning her blog posts into a book, and a Hollywood producer was considering optioning three of her books.
After noting that was “not a bad way to go out,” Emmons wrote, “I do not dread death. In an unexpected way I have come to look forward to it. I have no idea what awaits me–my only regret is that I won’t be able to share it with you.”
— Kristi Turnquist
503-221-8227; kturnquist@oregonian.com; @Kristiturnquist
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