Very sorry about your father. But, much has changed since the 1960s. This young woman didn’t have to take a suicide pill. She could’ve checked herself into hospice.
I’m not a fan of hospice because, within the last several years, I’ve noticed that hospitals try to push patients (such as my own father) into hospice even when they want to continue fighting.
But, if that was this young woman’s wish, she could’ve arranged hospice care at her home.
I suspect she wanted to go out without being bedridden and having her internal organs shut down one by one. Death by cancer is a miserable process, not only for the patient, but for the family.