When Petra and Michael Mathers decided their time had come, they did what they had always done, they did it together, quietly, and with care.

They’d been married more than forty years. Petra was a children’s book author and illustrator with a gentle, whimsical touch. Michael was a photographer known for capturing fading corners of the American West. Both carried themselves with the kind of calm that comes from knowing who you are and what matters.

So when handwritten letters started showing up across Oregon and Washington, signed, stamped, and sent to friends and familiar places, no one realized right away they were the couple’s final words.

One envelope arrived at Paramount Drug in Astoria, where Petra and Michael were regulars. It was addressed to the staff by name. Inside, Petra had written on yellow legal paper:

“When Michael and I got together some 40 plus years ago, we’d always planned on checking out together when the time comes. It did, and our resting place is in the graveyard in Oysterville… Come see us sometime… We’ve had a great run.”

Next to her signature, Michael had added a single line:

“I hope they’re playing ‘50s music where we go.”

Later that day, police found the couple at home on their wooded hillside. Petra was lying peacefully on a small sofa. Michael sat nearby in a chair. On the floor was a clear plastic bag, a canister marked compressed nitrogen, and a note to the officers who would find them.

“We apologize for this unpleasant task,” it said. “But since we want to quietly die together at home, this seemed the only solution.”

There were no flashing lights, no chaos. They had left instructions to keep things calm. Even the cats were safely boarded ahead of time.

Petra went first. Michael made sure she was gone, arranged her body gently, and followed using the same method. It was the kind of exit chosen by people who study their options closely — clean, quiet, and deliberate.

They weren’t ill. They weren’t broke. They were, by every account, still deeply in love. Friends called them “complicated,” but never unhappy. The only clue came years back when Petra once said, “It was Michael’s idea, and Michael is always right.”

Their graves rest beneath old trees in Oysterville Cemetery, a small seaside burial ground. On their curved headstone is a simple question mark.

When someone once asked about it, Michael smiled and said, “Because we don’t know what comes next.”

That was the heart of it, not despair, not drama, but mystery. The same sense of wonder that ran through Petra’s illustrated worlds and through Michael’s quiet photographs.

They lived with curiosity, and in the end, they stepped into the unknown the same way- side by side.