Many visitors commented on social media about getting to first visit Gramma when they were young, and being able to come back years later with their kids. Cristina Park, 69, said one of her earliest memories from her childhood was going to the San Diego Zoo when she was 3 or 4 years old and riding on the back of a tortoise.
I had two sisters in their mid-90s who availed themselves of Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying program. Both were incapacitated; they had lost their dignity and were facing amputations or prolonged stays in the hospital with no hope of survival. They were subjected to multiple interviews making sure that they were lucid. Both died surrounded by their family and a multitude of friends. We celebrated their courage to leave their horrible situation with grace. Everyone in attendance stated that they hoped they would have the courage to do the same. I found the system to be run with sensitivity and efficiency. Reports about abuses are few and far between. Canada should be proud that people in unbearable pain can decide to die when life is intolerable.
And even as his work has become more personal over the past few years (his two most recent films, the autobiographical Hand of God and the highly metaphorical Parthenope, are odes to his hometown of Naples), Sorrentino hasn't lost his fondness for the surreal, the garish, the epic, the scandalous, or the big colorful sequences pulsing with music and symbolism.
In January, Anne Canning traveled to the Pegasos clinic to end her life, hiding the true purpose from her family by saying she was going on holiday.