We Walked Him to the Door: My Husband’s Death by MAID By Lori Weber
Reviewed by Carolyne Van Der Meer
Dartmouth, NS-based, Montreal-born Lori Weber is a YA novelist, and a decorated one at that. The Ribbon Leaf, a historical novel set during World War II, won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for fiction in 2023. By all accounts, Weber is not a memoirist—but write a memoir she did—one that was powerful enough to win the Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 2025. The award is not surprising: Weber is known for her hard-hitting prose, including the acclaimed Lightning Lou, the story of a young boy who plays for an all-girls’ hockey league during World War I.
But her memoir, We Walked Him to the Door: My Husband’s Death by MAID, has a different kind of power. Like all memoirs, it is deeply personal. But this is also the story of a family’s profound grief when one member chooses medical assistance in dying (MAID): Weber’s husband Ron and father to Cindy, Aidan and Cassandra.
After living for most of his adult life with ankylosing spondilitis, a rare and excruciatingly painful disease that results in the fusing together of the vertebrae, Ron decided he could no longer tolerate the pain. His condition complicated by fibromyalgia and IBS, he had reached a junction where his quality of life was too compromised. The 2021 revision to the MAID law, Bill C-7, had passed in Canada, allowing those whose deaths were not foreseeable to opt for the procedure—but for Ron, it was a solution to a life that had become dominated by pain, limited mobility and a loss of independence.
Weber’s memoir documents not only the complex process that an invocation of MAID represents, but she also explores their 35-year life together—from their first meeting to their last-minute marriage, to her involvement in the lives of Ron’s daughters from an earlier relationship, to the raising of their own daughter, Cassandra. This is a book of great tenderness that clearly illustrates that while lives lived share many commonalities, other elements are utterly and also tragically unique.
Weber’s innate storytelling ability enables her to recount a whole life with compassion and sensitivity, unveiling both the public and the private with respect and dignity. Navigating her husband’s decision to invoke MAID alongside him, supporting him with tight objectivity while also grieving his eventual departure, took enormous strength—knowing Ron’s success in getting what he wanted would also be her and her family’s greatest loss.
I recommend this book for so many reasons: for its compelling writing, for its insights into suffering and grief, for its unique understanding of the intricacies and complexities of MAID—and for the deep love it so aptly and beautifully expresses. Weber is without a doubt a fine novelist, but with this book, she also proves her mastery of the memoir in ways I think neither she nor her readers could ever have expected.
About the Author
Lori Weber is a Canadian author who lives and writes in Dorval, Quebec. She teaches Creative Writing and loves visiting school classrooms to talk about books and writing.
About the Reviewer
Carolyne Van Der Meer is a Montreal-based poet with five published collections, the most recent of which is All This As I Stand By (Ekstasis Editions, 2024). Her recent chapbook, Birdology (Cactus Press, 2025) explores what she calls “the science of grief and birds.” In 2017, she was chosen for the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s mentorship program, for which Lori Weber was her YA fiction mentor.
Book Details
ISBN 9781990770814
174 pp
Pottersfield Press
$21.95