On "Choosing To Die"

I watched a documentary yesterday called Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die. If you haven't heard of him, Terry Pratchett is a British fantasy writer: he wrote something called the Discworlds series, but the first of his work I read was a collaboration novel he wrote with Neil Gaiman called "Good Omens".

In 2007, Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And he's still in the early stages of Alzheimer's, but there were little things - he said that he almost always immedietly forgets people's names. He can no longer type, and instead dictates to his assistant when he writes, because Terry Pratchett feels he has to finish the book he's in the middle of writing. As a writer, I can't get my head around how frustrating this must be. Following this, he presented a documentary which aired a few nights ago, on BBC1, about euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The documentary focused on Dignitas, a clinic in Swizerland which helps those with terminal illnesses to die. The film followed a man named Peter Smedley, with motor neurone disease, who travelled to Swizerland with his wife to die in this odd little blue house. It was right in the middle of an industrial estate, because it was the only place it was allowed to be. Amongst all the tall buildings and cars, at the back of the house, was a small zen garden. It was a place of comfort - there were comfortable chairs, a bed, large bowls of chocolate and over fifty different kinds of tea.

The documentary followed both Peter Smedley's choice to die at Dignitas and his death itself, and after first watching him and his wife talking about it in the most impossibly straightforward and businesslike way, I was shocked by how quickly the transfer seemed to be between then and the man's death. Peter drank the mixture that would kill him quickly, then ate some of the chocolates his wife had picked out of the bowl from him after requesting that he didn't want the praline ones. His wife kept very sincere and unemotive, holding his hand as he first struggled to breathe then slipped into sleep, and I think she may just have been one of the bravest women I've ever seen.

Peter Smedley's death was calm and peaceful and just seemed so right - at least for him, then, in that situation. I agree with the idea of Dignitas and what it does for people. The process was thorough in ensuring the person asking to die was in right mind, knew exactly how the process would work and was completley sure.

But what struck me was the fact that the program said something like 21% of the people who die at Dignitas don't have any terminal illness at all. I can't decide how I feel about that, because I don't know if someone vunerable and depressed and scared should have the option to slip away so easily, depite how thorough the doctors at the Dignitas clinic are with ensuring the patient is of sound mind. There is a difference between someone who is scared and wanting an easier suicide, and a terminally ill cancer patient relieving themselves of pain.

Maybe, however, it's up to us. I have a lot of arguments in my head about what I think about suicide - whether it's selfish towards the people who love them, or whether ending our life is a basic human right. I have no idea why but at the back of a notebook I used to use when I was about eleven, I've written "You don't know another person until you've walked a mile in their shoes" and I'm fairly sure it's one of those things my mother used to tell me but it's true.

It would cause far too much controversy to compare mental and physical pain and struggle, whether either one is worse, but they are completley different things. And whilst it's kinder to consider the people around us and who suicide will affect, when being in the world is so much of a struggle, whether that means a strain on the body or the soul, the choice to end it or to stay can only be down to one person. I think that Dignitas dealt with this in a way that was almost beautiful, and although I'm sad about Peter Smedley and I will be sad about Terry Pratchett, and I even spent a few minutes after the documentary quietly weeping in the kitchen, it comforts me knowing that if I ever become terminally ill and am in a lot of pain, depending on the situation ethics, there is a little blue house in the middle of Europe, in the snow, that managed to deal with this is the kindest and most moral and graceful way I think possible.