Husband of Brittany Maynard: To suggest that she should suffer for me, for anyone? No (VIDEO)



PORTLAND, Oregon --  Brittany Maynard, drew national attention last fall when she publicly announced that at the age of 29 she was choosing to end her own life and thus end her battle with terminal brain cancer.

This week Maynard’s husband, Dan Diaz, spoke publicly for the first time about his wife’s decision.

“That’s the thing is, is you don’t want to let go of your loved one,” Diaz told Meredith Vieira. “But to suggest that she should suffer for me, for anyone? No. That’s what you struggle with. Here’s the person I love and I don’t want to see her go.”

Vieira went on NBC’s Today Show Wednesday morning to present selections from the interview.



The couple moved to the Portland area because Maynard said she wanted to use Oregon’s law to end her life on her own terms.

From the beginning, Maynard said she would end her life on Nov. 1, two days after Diaz's birthday.

But then on Oct. 29, she said in another online video that it didn’t seem like the “right time to die.”

“I still feel good enough and I still have enough joy and I still laugh and smile with my family and friends enough that it doesn’t seem like the right time right now,” she said at the time. “But it will come, because I feel myself getting sicker. It’s happening each week.”

When Nov. 1 arrived, Diaz said his wife suffered a seizure shortly after waking up that morning.



Diaz said she then knew “it was her time,” that Maynard faced becoming blind, paralyzed and unable to speak.

Maynard went on a walk through the woods with her husband, family members a friend and her dog. And she ended her life later that day.