Short story: robot butler helps elderly man decide when to commit suicide

Question

A paperback short story collection I read in the 1992-2002 era included a story in which a man was sinking into dementia. Appreciating that the progressive nature of the disease would make it hard for him to recognize the right time, he programmed a robot butler with his values and memories. He secretly assigned the butler to help him choose a time to commit suicide that would be early enough that he would still be capable of doing so on his chosen terms, but late enough that his quality of life was below his target threshold. His wife thought it was just a routine robotic household/professional servant.

Story was probably written 1980-1995, and probably published in an SF periodical before being collected into a PB collection. Collection was probably author-centric, rather than theme-centric. I think it's on my shelves somewhere, but asking here is faster than skimming all my shelves volume by volume.

Answer 1

Living Will by Alexander Jablokov, perhaps. This was published in Asimov's in 1991 and in the The Year's Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual Collection in 1992.

This review says:

A very poignant story built around a simple premise: what if you could encode a simulation of your personality into a piece of software and let it make the decision when a disease had changed you so much (here Alzheimers) your old, encoded self wouldn’t want to go on living and burdening others and would tell you to kill yourself?

It's available here

Quote from near the climax of the story:

“Get the plastic sheet,” the computer commanded.

“What?”

“The plastic sheet. It’s under the back porch where you put it.”

“I don’t remember any plastic sheet.”

“I don’t care if you remember it or not. Go get it and bring it in here.”

Obediently, clumsily, Roman dragged in the heavy roll of plastic and spread it out on the study floor in obedience to the computer’s instructions.

With a loud click the secure drawer slid open. Roman reached in and pulled out the pistol. He stared at it in wonder.