Dressed in her most beautiful clothes, her nails painted in emerald green and wearing high heel boots studded with silver stars, 59-year-old Doerte Lebender lay back on a chair in her room and gratefully said goodbye to the island as a lethal neuromuscular blocker was injected into her veins. For the first time in thirty-five years, she was at peace, free of the debilitating pain that Multiple Sclerosis disease had inflicted on her body, her mind sharp but her nerves dead. She had opened the window of her small apartment in Ibiza town to allow her soul to pass freely from this life to the next, not far from the ancient Necropolis of Puig des Moulins where the Carthaginians and Romans buried their nobility as they regarded Ibiza as a portal to the next life.

She had prepared the room she would leave her mortal body in, it was decorated with fresh flowers, her baptism robes and a candle she had bought in Notre Dame Cathedral in 1989. She had said goodbye to all her human friends who understood and supported her passing, her only regret was that she could not communicate that decision to her loyal grey-haired canine friend of many years, Sparky.  She listened to her favourite piece of music, Feuerlicht, by Herbert Gronemeyer for one last time.