Me Before You Mortality

This is the moment when Lou realizes that Will has attempted suicide—which explains his mother's insistence that she not leave him alone for an extended period of time. Lou knew he was having trouble adapting to his new life, but she never suspected that he'd do something like that.

To Will, his decision to end his life is simple: he can't live without hope for recovery. Suicide is an awful thing, and something that should never be discussed lightly, but Will's situation makes the debate more complicated than it is normally depicted.

Lou, like most of us, has a hard time understanding Will's desire to go to an assisted suicide facility like Dignitas. Living life as a quadriplegic is challenging, without a doubt, but he can learn to adapt, right? While most people can live full lives in the aftermath of such injuries, it's clear that Will feels himself incapable of doing so.

The story of the young footballer who commits assisted suicide at Dignitas gets to the heart of this very controversial issue. On the one hand, it's tragic whenever anyone makes the choice to end his or her own life, regardless of circumstances. On the other hand, the situation gets more complicated when the person in question might commit suicide in a much less humane way otherwise.

Unlike Lou, Nathan has some understanding for Will's decision to go to Dignitas. He doesn't exactly support it, but he knows that no one can make that choice but Will himself.

This is the heart of the issue. Out of their love for Will, his parents and Lou want to keep him alive at all costs, but they don't take into account what he wants. This is not necessarily to support his decision, but simply to explain it.

That's a lot to ask from someone. But what else is Lou supposed to do? Ignore his request? Leave him alone? Forget that she ever met him? It's a hard thing to watch a loved one make such a serious decision, but if there's nothing she can do to change his mind, she might as well give him as much support as possible before it happens.

Will doesn't merely live with the knowledge that he'll never recover—he also has to face the prospect that he'll most likely get sicker and sicker over time. It's easy to point fingers and judge him for his decision to end his own life, but it's valuable to put yourself in his shoes and think about how profoundly such a thing would affect you.

Of course, what Mrs. Clark doesn't know is how hard his parents have fought to keep Will alive, and how all of those efforts have failed to make an impact on him. It's a tough decision on their part, but they were essentially left without options.

This comes from a letter that Will wrote to Lou before his death. Lou is still struggling with a whirlwind of emotions—grief, anger, guilt, and sadness, to name a few—and she probably can't see the light at the end of the tunnel quite yet. But we think she'll get there. Although loving Will has caused her a great deal of pain, it's also opened her up to a whole new way of seeing the world.