For the first few months of his illness he could still enjoy life (Picture: Barbara Wall)
The last time I saw my dad Charles, in November 2016, he told me that he was ‘as weak as a kitten’.
He’d been diagnosed with terminal oesophageal cancer that January. We were both devastated, especially because we knew that, even with treatment, the end was going to be difficult and distressing.
For the first few months of his illness he could still enjoy life: ride his bicycle and go for his beloved weekly half pint of Guinness.
But he began finding swallowing more and more difficult, with secretions from tumours causing him severe distress.
By the summer, he’d lost four stone. He’d once loved his food and found not being able to eat very upsetting. He was also having trouble sleeping, but just couldn’t keep sleeping tablets down.
He began telling me that he was ready to die.
While it was devastating, I understood why he wanted to end his suffering. I know that if assisted dying had been an option for him, he would have gladly taken it. He told his doctor exactly this, though he knew that they couldn’t help him.
My dad, Charles, was once an active and sociable man – even into his 90s. This was not the man who was discovered in his garage on November 13 2016, having taken his own life. This was not the death he deserved.
Last night on Channel 4, audiences saw Dame Prue Leith and her son, Tory MP Danny Kruger, travel across North America on a ‘Death Road Trip’ investigating their assisted dying laws.
It’s an unorthodox journey for a mother and son to make, even more so considering how polarised their views are: Prue is a patron of Dignity in Dying, while Danny is attempting to block legalisation in the UK.
Prue’s support for assisted dying came after she revealed that her late brother, David, suffered in his final days with bone cancer in 2012 – and her late husband, Rayne Kruger, asked doctors for ‘a bit of assistance’ with dying during his battle with emphysema in 2002.
He could hardly speak when I visited him (Picture: Barbara Wall)
I, like the majority of the British public, side with Prue. We can see that the current law in this country is not just cruel, but dangerous.
Hundreds of terminally ill people are being forced to take their own lives every year – my own father among them.
This isn’t fear mongering, it’s reality. But one that Danny and others seemingly refuse to recognise.
In the last few months of his life, my dad was frequently breathless, he lost even more weight and could barely keep even soup down.
During this time he was receiving excellent palliative care. The nurses, GPs, his weekly carer and specialists couldn’t do enough for him, but he felt any intervention would merely prolong the inevitable.
He could hardly speak when I visited him, but when he could, he repeated that he was ready to die and wanted to go on his own terms.
In mid-November I called him but he didn’t answer. I assumed he was sleeping but when I tried again later he still didn’t pick up. I rang his neighbour to ask if they could check on him.
The neighbour called me back in tears, telling me my dad was dead in his garage.
Dad had wanted to spare anyone the trauma of finding him, leaving a note explaining his choice and warning whoever found him what they were going to see. He’d tidied the entire house and done the washing up, desperate to minimise the impact on others. He was a widow and lived alone, I was his only child.
It breaks my heart thinking that he did it all in secret. That he died alone. Things could and should have been different, just as they are in the places Prue and Danny explore in the show.
In countries like Australia and New Zealand, terminally ill people have choice in how they die, with the option of assisted dying if they want it.
My dad should have been able to decide when the time was right for him. We could have gathered his neighbours and family for a final goodbye before he went to sleep peacefully in his own bed, as he wished.
He should have been spared those final few weeks of unbearable suffering and the lonely, traumatic death he felt forced into.
Sadly, my dad is not alone. Every year, up to 650 dying people take their own lives, with up to 10 times as many attempts.
I would ask MPs who are against changing the law how they can possibly believe that doing nothing is a safer option than granting people’s wishes to die on their own accord.
We must do better for terminally ill people like my dad, and that starts with recognising that the current laws of our own country are unjust.
My dad deserved better. He deserved a choice.
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My dad wanted to go out on his own terms. With assisted dying illegal, he was left with no other choice.
