The day my mother asked me to kill her

With today’s vote on the assisted dying bill, I am reminded of my mother. Susie was 89, in failing health but of sound mind, when she took me aside at her house in the south of France to tell me she wanted me to kill her. She had no intention, she said, of enduring the humiliation of a decaying memory and a crumbling body, and was determined to avoid the old people’s home, the geriatric ward and the hospice.

‘You have to know,’ she said to me, ‘not only when to leave a job, or a party, or a relationship, but more importantly, when to leave life itself.’ Susie told me she needed help with her plan of killing herself, and asked if I would help. This being my mother, she had already started a to-do list, or to-die list as she called it.