So if you would start by telling me the full story from the beginning, please.
My father was in a nursing home as he had mainly lost his motor neurone function, and was getting progressively worse, whilst unfortunately being of completely sound mind. And he was aged 84. And all my life my parents had brought me up to believe in the right to terminate your life when you decided to. And my father asked me, well, when he was, still lived at home, he’d asked me to get details of Dignitas, based in Switzerland, because they were the only organisation and country we knew of who would help people end their lives.
And so using Google I found out Dignitas’s address and wrote to them. And they sent us information on how to join. It’s a charity in Switzerland, so it’s all by way of donations, and you pay to be a member. And at the time that we got the details my father did nothing further. It was then just before he went in the home that he became a member of Dignitas. And the home was a private home. It’s not how my father had wished to spend the money he’d saved to pass on to his children. Physically he was in a right state and very miserable. My brother lives in the south of France and so was having to come over every month to see my parents. He’d stay for 24 hours. My partner and I would see my father two to three times a week in the home. And he was very very unhappy. Dignitas will only help people who have a terminal illness. And unfortunately my father wasn’t actually diagnosed with motor neurone and so did not have a terminal illness, and was just getting progressively worse. So we wrote to Dignitas, well, I wrote to Dignitas. My mother, although she believes strongly in the right to terminate your life, wasn’t very cooperative at this stage. She’d been married to my father for sixty-two years. It was very difficult for her and she wasn’t ready, and therefore why should he be ready to leave her? And although she realised intellectually this was ridiculous and his position was completely untenable, nonetheless she did sort of pursue that line of thinking for some time. So in the meantime I was the one who sort of led the way.
Wrote to Dignitas. They wrote back. They wanted copies of doctors’ letters. And I had to speak to his doctor a number of times. She had had a couple of conversations with my father and he’d made it quite plain that he believed in euthanasia. And she was not uncooperative and she was not unsympathetic. Having said that, and, and, you know, when she could, when she could help she was prompt in dealing with it, it’s just that, you know, she wouldn’t go out of her way. Which is fair enough. But, you know, seemed like a nice person.
And so this process took months and they wrote back and said, “No.” Which was just a huge blow to all of us, particularly my father, who was by this time quite desperate. And so we wrote, and the family wrote, in fact my mother wrote most of it. And it was basically a begging letter. Their tenet is that they help people end their lives with dignity and that’s all my father was asking. And we, we basically said in the letter, “He’s 84 years old. You know, he’s going to die. Help him die well.”
And I can’t tell you how amazing it was to get an email giving us the green light. And they’re a fantastic organisation. All the people we dealt with were fantastic. And they write and they say, you know, “You’ve got the green light. You don’t have to do it now, because you know we’ll help. Or you can come and visit and just see. Or, you know, you can come and do it.” Well, there was no question that we had to go and do it. And what they did was give you something to drink, apparently it tasted horrible, and then you fell asleep. You would then go into a coma. You would then die. And how long it took all depended on how old you were and the state of your functions and.
And then about this time, it was possible to basically do it in 24 hours, to arrive on Sunday and have it done Monday morning. And they have a flat where they do it. And my father needed 24-hour care. He was unable to do anything for himself. He was by that time unable to even feed himself. And then there was something in the press, because they got a lot, lot of bad press, Dignitas, and they were told that if people were going to drink, they had to be in the country for at least four days, which was a huge blow, huge blow, because, you know, it was difficult. We, we weren’t sure how we’d manage for 24 hours without help. But Dignitas came back and said that it was okay, they’d do another method. Which is basically by gassing, and as long as he was able to pull a gas mask over his face. Nicer for the patient apparently, much worse for the witnesses. So they would suggest that my mother and I did not witness it and left the room. Now I never told my mother this. I spoke to my father about it and he said, “That’s fine” he’s happy to do it that way. And then, because my father was in such a bad way, we hired a private jet to travel over to Switzerland. And we’d booked a hotel for the night. And it was all arranged for the Sunday. And the Wednesday before, they phoned and said, “No. Because they won’t let us do gas any more. You have to stay for four days.” So I rang my brother and we rearranged everything.
And I rang Dignitas and said, “You’ll have to find my father an old people’s home. We can’t take care of him.” And, and it was interesting, because they were surprised. They said, “Well, you know, you’re coming mob-handed. Surely you’ll be able to cope.” And I said, you know, “You don’t understand. My father is completely helpless. My mother is 83. My brother is nearly 60.” And I had just been, I’d been taken ill and had a minor operation the day before, two days before we flew out on the Friday, by general anaesthetic. So I said, you know, “This, we can’t do this.” Now in Switzerland you have to be referred to an old people’s home by a doctor. And what was going to happen was on the Sunday we were going to go straight from the airport to a doctor, a Dignitas doctor, who would then interview my father to make sure he wasn’t bonkers and that he wasn’t being pressurised by his family. Then he’d refer him to a, to a home. So we’d take him straight to the home. He’d then stay there until the Wednesday morning. And we’d go to a hotel. And then we’d all go to the Dignitas flat outside Zurich and Dad would drink the potion and we’d stay with him.
So I mean amazing people, amazing people. So we flew out on a private jet and we had champagne on the way over. And we went straight to the doctor’s. And fantastic taxi driver, with one of those wheelchair lifts, who realised what we were there for and was very nice about it. Fantastic doctor, and because my father was in a wheelchair, he went and sat in the taxi and we went into his home. And he spent about an hour with Dad. And then we went to the home, and we really just sort of, it was quite late by then, we just left him there in the care of the deputy manager. We went to the hotel, had dinner, went to bed. Next day we went back, having changed hotel, and Dad was, was a bit unhappy. He’d had a bad night’s sleep. The home was just spotless and the people were fantastic and the food was brilliant and he had a really happy three days there. And so did we. We spent every morning with him for about three hours, and then we’d go back to the hotel, have lunch, have a rest, and go back and spend two or three hours with him in the afternoon. And we, you know, we chatted about memories and things and nothing and politics and . And it was the first time we’d spent time together as a family for years. And it was really nice. And then the people at the nursing home realised what we were up to and, and actually approved. And they were just worried we were going to do it there. And once they knew we weren’t, they couldn’t do enough for us. Brilliant people. They cried when we left.
So we got a taxi and we went to this flat. And it’s in a commercial area outside Zurich. And the two people who met us were Erica and her husband. And Erica and I had corresponded with and talked to a lot. And they were the most fantastic people. And they filmed my father three times. They asked him in front of us if this is what he really wanted. He said, “Yes, very much.” And they film him, they, we then go in the back bedroom, bit of classical music on. And he drank his potion in his two-handled mug that we’ve taken with, dragged to Switzerland with us, and, and just went, “Well, that wasn’t too bad then” and put it down on the table. And then we were all, we were all sort of holding hands and holding his hand. And we were sitting there for about a minute and he, he said, and I think he was going to say, “It’s not working yet” but actually he just went, “Oh” and just fell asleep very suddenly. And we stayed with him for about five minutes and then we left the room. All sort of cried a bit and hugged each other and had another bloody cup of tea.
And Dad fell into a coma and actually died within an hour. And it was, it was really nice, it was really nice. And then they call the police. And you can get the nice guys or the nasty guys, depending, you know. We got the nice guys. And they interview you and just say, you know, “Did he do it of his own accord?” And, “Yes, he did. And here’s his passport.” And then they call, I don’t know, the other people, and then finally the undertaker arrives. So we got there at 9 in the morning and we left at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. And in fact we saw him in his coffin, which is not how I’ll remember him. And it was a, you know, I’ll, I’ll remember him other ways. But it was the best, it was the best thing. Mum and I went back to the airport and we had a bottle of champagne on the flight back, and we felt very smug and we thought the family had done good.
So going, going right back.
Yes.
When your father first intimated that this was something that he would like to do, was it a surprise to you at all?
Not at all, not at all. We’d always talked about euthanasia as a family. We all approved of it. There was no question. And he’d been ill for quite a long time and had actually tried to commit suicide by taking paracetamol, although I had already told him not to because it wouldn’t work. But he didn’t listen to me. So it was absolutely no surprise at all.
