Four years ago at the age of 83 Star Trek legend Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock, passed away from complications related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. His widow Susan Bay recently detailed that the actor asked nurses to help him end his life on the day he died on February 27, 2015.
In an interview with Inside Edition, Susan Bay recalled that Nimoy’s battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was “terrible.” She added, “You cannot catch your breath. He couldn’t go out. For him to go from the parking lot to the movie theater, forget it.”
The disease was the result of Nimoy’s smoking habit, which he quit thirty years before his death. In fact, Nimoy had campaigned to encourage people to quit smoking and actively discouraged young people to light up.” Bay explains, “He was on a campaign to use his profile and make people think twice about lighting up.”
During the interview, Bay would go into detail about Nimoy’s last day. When asked by Inside Edition’s Jim Moret, “Did he say to you, ‘It’s time?'” Bay responded, “Yes.” She elaborated, “He didn’t want to be confined to a wheelchair and unable to breathe.”
She goes on to detail how Nimoy asked his nurses for help, “They keep adding a little bit more morphine over the period.” She adds, “He was in such a compromised and weakened condition that it did not take long.”
Bay concluded, “I believe in dying with dignity. Leonard believed … in dying with dignity.”
Bay has taken up her late husband’s campaign and she appears in a public service announcement using Spock’s famous words, “Live long and prosper.” Leonard Nimoy would have been 88 this past March.
What do you make of Susan Bay’s comments regarding Leonard Nimoy’s final day?