The following is a translation of an article in today’s Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper based in Milan (http://corrieredelveneto.corriere.it/veneto/notizie/cronaca/2014/20-febbraio-2014/i-parenti-denunciano-scomparsa-lei-aveva-scelto-eutanasia-svizzera-2224102460).
The agonized relatives had been searching for days, ending by denouncing her disappearance to the carabinieri. But she, Oriella Cazzanello, a lady of 85 from Arzignano, had chosen to say goodbye to life in silence, going to a clinic in Switzerland where euthanasia is practiced. The family members, with whom she was, moreover, on very good terms, learned of her act when, on Tuesday, there arrived by airmail to the notary her ashes, in an urn, as she had wished. The remains were accompanied by a letter from the clinic that explained what happened. The lady would have spent 10,000 euros for a lethal injection that was given to her at a clinic in Basil. Before completing the act, she would have made a visit to a specialist who declared her completely competent. At the origin of the suicide, there was not a malady but loneliness, accompanied by the weight of old age, which had inevitably made the beauty of which Signora Oriella had been proud diminish.