Give me liberty or give me death.... or being a librarian in Canada

As I voiced in class, it really bugged me how Laura, the 1951 woman, said she had to leave her family because that was her choosing life. I thought this was an awkward and somewhat faulty way to connect her to Mrs. Dalloway in the novel. I really don't think that you can call her choice life. By leaving the life she led with her children and husband, she was actually choosing death. The result if she had chosen to commit suicide would be pretty much the same to those around her. Either way she was considered dead to all those who she mattered too and mattered to her so is that really living? In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf presents the idea that we live on after our bodies are dead in the thoughts people think about us and how we've touched other peoples lives. Laura's choice led people, like her son for example, to completely try to block her out of his thoughts. So is she actually more dead than if she had committed suicide and her family mourned her more with sadness than trying to just forget her? When developing my thoughts on this topic, I ran into the issue of Richard's book. He obviously does think about his mother as he does write her into the book but the key fact is he writes that she dies. Thus, he perceives her as dead which brings me back around to my original question, Did Laura choose life? or did she actually choose symbolic death?