Ardis Macauley was a prolific artist whose work spanned multiple media. She had a special affinity for circular mandalas, like the one at right, created several decades ago. The other small black-and-white drawings pictured, though not strictly mandalas, reflect a similar circular tendency and shows the artist’s wide range of skill and interest. (Submitted photos)
Life after assisted death
- Published: May 1, 2025
Editor’s note: This story contains wide-ranging and frank discussion on the topics of death by suicide and assisted suicide. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
It was a chilly day in late March when Thomas Macaulay sat down in his Aspen Court home to speak with the News, whom he had invited there to talk about his wife, the late Ardis Macaulay. Looking out into a gray sky through a large window near his dining table, he mused briefly on his life with Ardis.
“I spent over 60 years with her, and you can’t really put that into words — but she was a dynamo,” Thomas Macaulay said.
The day the News spoke with him was almost a year to the day after Ardis Macaulay’s death. Very early on the morning of March 28, 2024, Ardis chose to die on her own terms, with her husband present.
Thomas Macaulay was aware of his wife’s decision to die — but he told the News he did not know that, within a few months of Ardis’ death, he would be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced for assisted suicide. He didn’t know, when Ardis made her decision, that assisting someone in their choice to die is illegal in the state of Ohio.
He invited the News to speak with him about his wife’s death, and the aftermath, in the hope that others might learn from his experiences — and not “the hard way,” as he did.
At the center of his experience was Ardis — a vibrant artist and educator who developed physical pain that wouldn’t go away.
For most of her 75 years of life, Ardis Macaulay was a creator — and a highly prolific one. She produced hundreds, if not thousands, of drawings, paintings, poems and more — enough to fill the Macaulay home and still have plenty left to give away after she died.
She was well-known for her creation of mandalas — circular drawings with cultural roots in Hindu and Buddhist practices. Drawn to the work of psychologist Carl Jung, who incorporated mandalas into his own research into the ideas of self-examination and the “collective unconscious,” Ardis began to explore Jung’s mandala techniques in the 1970s.
“It did not disappoint,” she wrote of her mandala exploration in a 2022 professional resume. “I was amazed by the sense of inner knowing that emerged from this endeavor. Working within the circle format soon became my passion.”
With degrees in visual art and art therapy, Ardis Macaulay became an educator, teaching Montessori and junior high schools and, later, in Tecumseh and Bethel high schools. She left teaching for a while to work as an art therapist at Dartmouth Psychiatric and Kettering hospitals, but later returned to teaching art at Mechanicsburg High School, from which she retired. She incorporated elements of her therapeutic art practice into her teaching, and Thomas Macaulay said the art curricula she provided to her students were robust.
“She had drawing and painting, of course, and then printmaking and sculpture and photography, clay and ceramics,” he said. “She was always striving to be the best art teacher possible.”
The Macaulays moved to Yellow Springs in 2018, and brought with them a number of plants from their former, larger home in Miami County. Ardis was looking for a place to rehome some of her plants — and she found it at the yoga studio House of AUM, which was, at the time, located in a Kings Yard building replete with large, sun-filled windows.
That’s how Ardis Macaulay began a friendship with local resident and House of AUM owner, Melissa Herzog, who is now the executor of Ardis’ considerable artistic estate. In 2020, Herzog said, Ardis donated more than 100 of her paintings to the studio, with sales from the art to help benefit House of AUM as it navigated the pandemic.
“Her art is very spiritual — they’re like transmissions in themselves,” Herzog said. “So people that were coming in really gravitated towards her work and were her audience.”
Thomas Macaulay said Ardis began experiencing pain and sleeplessness in early 2024 after being prescribed lorazepam — a benzodiazepine often taken for anxiety — and then being abruptly taken off the medication by a doctor. After researching her symptoms, Ardis concluded she was experiencing protracted benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome, which some studies suggest can affect around 10% of those who stop taking benzodiazepines and can result in chronic pain and sleeplessness for weeks, months or even years.
Ardis Macaulay saw a number of doctors, including a neurologist, as she battled her ongoing pains, which her husband said left a burning sensation that would come and go.
“It was all over her body at different times; it would move all over,” he said. “Her neurological system was just shot.”
When Ardis received no relief via traditional medicine, Thomas Macaulay said she looked to other practices for any method that might help, trying myofascial release, acupuncture, massage and reiki.
“I mean, you name it — we were trying everything,” he said.
Ardis did gain some limited respite from these practices, but it didn’t last. At the same time, she was still sleepless, often for days at a time.
“She felt like her body was so out of control, and feared that she was going to lose her mind, too,” Herzog said. “She was desperately trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, to try to figure out how to manage her pain, and to be able to sleep — if she could just sleep.”
Thomas Macaulay added: “Sleep deprivation is a kind of torture — and she was feeling tortured.”
After a few months with no answers — and, she felt, no options — Thomas Macaulay said Ardis made a decision.
“Our son came to visit [from Costa Rica], and then after he left, I think she became more convinced that suicide was going to be the only answer,” he said.
Ardis Macaulay planned to die via asphyxiation, aided by the use of liquid nitrogen. Because she was too ill to do so herself, Thomas Macaulay quietly purchased the nitrogen for her.
“I didn’t want to involve anyone else — but I didn’t know what I was doing was illegal,” he said.
Ardis prepared for her death with rigorous research into her chosen method, and wrote several letters in her own hand that explained clearly her medical issues, her choice to die and that her husband had purchased the nitrogen on her behalf because she could not do it herself. These documents were intended to be handed to law enforcement authorities who would doubtlessly respond in the wake of her death.
In the predawn hours of March 28, Ardis awoke Thomas and told him it was time. He watched as she carried out the procedure and described the sensations she was feeling, then became quiet and still. Thomas Macaulay waited, he said, about 20 minutes — and then he called the police.
“That’s when all hell broke loose — and that’s what she didn’t want to have happen,” he said.
It’s not illegal to die by suicide in Ohio, but the state is not one of the 10 — plus Washington, D.C. — that has a law on the books that permits aid in dying. It’s a third-degree felony in Ohio to assist a person in dying by suicide, according to ORC 3795.04 — and suicide deaths are investigated by responding law enforcement.
The YS Police Department responded to Thomas Macaulay’s call a little after 3 a.m., and were later accompanied by Miami Township Fire-Rescue.
“Death investigations follow a very specific process, no matter the type of death,” YSPD Chief Paige Burge told the News. “As investigators, we treat every death as a homicide until proven otherwise — that’s the safest thing to do.”
In cases where a person’s cause of death can’t immediately be determined, investigation is handed over to the Greene County Coroner’s Office, Burge added — and though Thomas Macaulay made it clear that Ardis had died by suicide, Burge said that was up to the coroner to confirm.
“In this circumstance, we did have specific details from Mr. Macaulay, and he essentially asked if we could hold off, because it had been a long night before we came by,” Burge said. “Unfortunately, that’s not how things work.”
She added that it’s “not uncommon for [YSPD officers] to use discretion” in their policing around nonviolent offenses, such as traffic stops and minor misdemeanors — but that discretion stops at felonies.
“When we start getting into the territory of felonious crimes — no matter the nature — we try and stay within the letter of the law as opposed to the spirit of the law,” she said.
Thomas Macaulay was indicted in June for two third-degree felony counts of assisted suicide: “providing the physical means by which the other person commits or attempts to commit suicide” and “participating in a physical act by which the other person commits or attempts to commit suicide.”
Though Thomas Macaulay maintained that he did not participate in physically aiding his wife in her death, he pleaded guilty to both counts; the second count was dismissed at trial in September 2024. In November, he was sentenced to five years probation; in December, his probation was terminated in full and all associated filing, processing and supervision fees were waived.
“It just went away,” Thomas Macaulay said. “It was basically swept under the rug — which should have been done originally.”
Greene County Prosecuting Attorney David Hayes, who provided an email statement to the News this month, wrote that, in his 23 years with the Prosecutor’s Office, Thomas Macaulay’s was the first assisted suicide case to be tried in Greene County’s courts.
“In deciding what to recommend, the State considered that the defendant was 77 years old, he had no criminal history whatsoever and did not carry a presumption that the defendant be incarcerated,” Hayes wrote. “In addition, the defendant did not, in my view, represent a danger to society. Setting my personal feelings aside, I believe that the State’s recommendation was the right one based on the facts of the case.”
Hayes added that, personally, he is “vehemently opposed to assisted suicide,” but that “end of life issues are intensely personal and are fraught with strong emotions and what seem like impossible choices.”
“As a human being, I am sympathetic to that reality. As the Greene County Prosecuting Attorney, however, I have a responsibility to follow the law and prosecute those who break it.”
Thomas Macaulay said he was distraught over the events that followed his wife’s death; he said the home he and Ardis shared for six years was filled with several police officers and sheriff’s deputies less than an hour after she died.
“I don’t know why they needed all those people in here looking at my dead wife,” he said. “It just seemed really disrespectful to me — to the dead.”
But what really stings, he said, is Ardis Macaulay’s death certificate, which was filed Oct. 1, 2024. It lists the manner of death as “homicide,” and describes it as “at the hands of another.”
“That’s the way it’s going to be forever — that she died by homicide,” he said.
The News reached out to the Greene County Coroner’s Office for clarity on the death certificate, but did not receive a response by press time.
Thomas Macaulay said he understands that death by suicide is a complex topic, as is the way it affects those who consider it and the people around them. He believes that suicide should be prevented when it comes to younger people, whom he believes turn to it “because of a mental wound of some kind that, in time, could heal if the suicide was prevented.”
“On the other hand,” he added, “I believe that most older individuals commit suicide because of a physical wound of some kind, that in time only gets progressively worse, in spite of modern medicine.”
He said he wishes the law in Ohio reflected this belief, as in states with “Death with Dignity” laws that make allowances for medical aid in dying, typically via medication and with the oversight of a physician. Medical aid in dying eligibility in participating states is, at present, only extended to those 18 and older who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Most states also impose a residency requirement, with the exception of Oregon and Vermont.
Crucially, the aid of an attending physician in “Death with Dignity” states means loved ones of those who are eligible won’t be at risk of criminal activity, because they won’t be called on to help.
“What the [Ohio] Legislature has come up with is that it’s not illegal to kill yourself, and if you try and fail, there’s no punishment,” he said. “But if you help someone kill themselves, prison can be the result. It just seems so ridiculous.”
He added: “I wonder how many handgun suicides there have been in Yellow Springs, with the gun registered to another person, that have gone uncharged as assisted suicide?”
Thomas Macaulay said Ardis asked him, just before her death, why he wasn’t trying to talk her out of dying.
“And I said, ‘That would be the most selfish thing I could think of,’” he said. “If someone can’t stand to be here, why would you want to ask them to endure that some more?”
Ardis Macaulay’s life was celebrated in Yellow Springs last summer, with those attending invited to choose from a selection of Ardis’ many, many works of art to take home with them. It was one of her expressed wishes, which she communicated in a letter — that none of her art be thrown away. Thomas Macaulay said he plans to hold another such gathering this August, inviting Ardis’ former Mechanicsburg High School students to attend.
At the end of this year, Thomas Macaulay plans to move to Costa Rica; his and Ardis’ son, Ian, lives there with his wife and child and operates a permaculture homestead, Finca Tierra, in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. Near Finca Tierra, Ardis’ ashes now rest under a large tree.
“There’s a smaller tree next to it, which I guess is going to become my tree,” Thomas Macaulay said. “That’s where my ashes are going to be.”
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