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.
Some days my mum really wanted to kill herself, and some days she really did not
‘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. I thought it an interesting project. To be honest, I had endured a tricky and volatile relationship with my mum and had often, over the years, wanted to kill her. At last I was going to get my wish.
Over the following year, we began to look at her options. It quickly became clear that the process was not going to be easy. Whether it was procuring drugs, a firearm or finding a place to leap off, everything was illegal. This infuriated Susie. But the months of talking through the moral, emotional, legal and practical issues drew me closer to my mum. I can recommend assisted suicide as a way of healing family rifts.
Naturally, I suggested we look into a trip to Switzerland. But Susie had already ruled Dignitas out. For her, signing off her life was not a cold, chemical process but an opportunity to depart in style. My dad was a successful Sixties movie writer, and the two of them had enjoyed a glamorous existence. Even though that was long ago, she wasn’t going to do anything by the book now. Not that there was a book about this subject, which made the two of us think there should be, and we wrote one about our project, called Time to Go.
She was adamant that the state had no say over her body or what she decided to do with it. I agreed with her. It is not the job of government to appear in the rooms of old, tired people and tell them what to do. As Susie said, she had earnt the right at 89 to decide what was best for herself. She thoroughly resented people – particularly men – telling her what was wrong or right.
She was contemptuous, too, of the clergy and political class who weighed in against her line of thought. If you accept the idea that they are the creators of the society we live in, somebody dying to leave it is an indictment of their achievements. Bishops have the air of a host standing at their front door imploring guests not to leave their party. My mum didn’t like their party any more, and she wanted to leave. That seemed fair enough to me. I believed they should conduct themselves with some decorum and get out of her way.
For my mum, Dignitas was, despite its name, or perhaps because of it, undignified. It was too utilitarian, bland and ugly for Susie. She wanted a bit more personality and drama in her goodbye, and I thought, why not? I realised that as the wedding industry has become a behemoth, so quite soon, if this bill is passed, will the industry of assisted dying. My mum had strong (though quickly changing) views on what she wanted. One day, she wished to lie on her bed in her favourite dress on her favourite white lace spread, vase of snowdrops and some carefully selected books on the nightstand; the next, she wanted a Grace Kelly car accident. She even made me drive her around the gorges of the Lake District looking for a precipitous drop and a gap in the armco barrier. These drives, though shocking to some people, were some of the happiest and most honest times I ever spent with my mum, seeing her at her most vulnerable facing her future in her typically imperious manner. When we found a spot to drive over, she hesitated. She said to me: ‘It will have to be in your car.’ I had just bought a new Audi. I asked her why. She said: ‘You know I don’t feel entirely safe driving my own car.’
She knew that many people, even her family and friends, would have disapproved of her course of action, but she dismissed their views. ‘The people with the thinnest lives hang on to them the hardest. Ernest, Virginia Woolf… They knew how to live, and die.’ I think she had met Hemingway for about 20 minutes at a party in Manhattan in 1960, but I never heard her use his surname.
The problem was that some days my mum really wanted to kill herself, and some days she really did not. I said to her not to worry, and that at a certain point her mind would be settled one way or another. Before that day, while in her kitchen making a blanquette de veau for some neighbours, Susie slipped over, banged her head, had a massive stroke and was taken to hospital. The doctor, in possession of a comprehensive letter of wishes she kept in her handbag (which I have a copy of), allowed her to die peacefully with me beside the bed. It all worked out rather well.
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