My Friend Wendy’s Case for Assisted Dying to be Legalised
An exclusive video recorded weeks before her death
Something hasn’t been sitting right with me for the last couple of months. Many of you will remember that in February I lost my dear friend and ‘partner-in-writing’ (as she described me), Wendy Mitchell.
Wendy had been living with dementia since 2014, and we had written three bestselling books together, Somebody I Used to Know, What I Wish People Knew About Dementia, and One Last Thing: How To Live With The End in Mind.
Wendy ended her life by voluntary stopping eating and drinking (VSED) in February. She made this decision because she didn’t want to be taken into the end stages of dementia and, with no assisted dying laws available to her in this country, she needed to die while she still had mental capacity to make the decision to end her life. It would be accurate to say that the fact we have no legislation on assisted dying meant that she was forced to go before she was ready.
In Wendy’s last blog post announcing her death to her followers, and which I republished here, Wendy made one request: “…if you want to do something for me, please campaign for assisted dying to be law here.”
In the days that followed her death, and with permission from her two daughters, I spoke on various radio and TV programmes paying tribute to Wendy and trying to explain her decision to end her life. But since then, interest has faded away, and I have felt that I am not fulfilling Wendy’s last request to campaign for assisted dying to be legalised in England and Wales.
On Monday this week, a debate was held in parliament, where MPs discussed this topic as a result of a petition signed by more than 200,000 people. Over three hours, both sides of the argument were heard, there were some impassioned pleas, there were tears, and there were the arguments that allowing people with a terminal illness with less than six months to live to end their life — and therefore their suffering — would eventually allow others to define, and end, their own suffering as they saw fit. What people always fail to recognise is that if you do not want to end your life prematurely, then you don’t have to. It is incredibly hard, even in countries that have legalised assisted dying to end your life.
Wendy was aware that even a change in the law would not have given her the right to die, but she knew that allowing those with a terminal illness and less than six months to live the opportunity to end their suffering a few weeks earlier would be something.
But all this is to say that I feel I am not doing enough to advance this argument on behalf of my friend who waited ten days to die after refusing all food and water in February.
A few weeks before she died, Wendy recorded a video for readers of her final book, One Last Thing, and I have permission from our publishers, Bloomsbury, to share it here exclusively for the first time.
It is nine minutes long, and it is my dear friend Wendy explaining directly to camera why she believed that people have a right to define suffering for themselves, and choose a death with dignity.
You may not agree with her — as always I would be keen to know your views in the comments, as I know Wendy would have been — but at least hear her out.
And if you could, please share her words, it is after all what she would have wanted.
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Wendy was amazing. I have all of her books. So much respect for her and so much gratitude to you, Anna, for assisting her to bring her books and work into publication.
I agree with her. Luckily in Australia, “VAD” (Voluntary Assisted Dying) is legal. There is a process to go through, and obviously strict legal and medical parameters, but I have seen people in the hospital where I work be able to die with dignity and go out “in style” rather than face the end of life that Wendy describes. I have a friend who chose that path and he was able to plan his dying and be surrounded by his closest family, all of whom understood his decision.
And on the other side, I watched my Mum pretty well starve herself to death after a severe stroke when she had lost all capacity to do anything else (before VAD was legal here). My mothers death was traumatising for everyone, and a journey she took alone, not sharing her thoughts. My friend’s death enabled us all to celebrate his life.
I think we should be allowed to choose. Quality of life is more important to me than length when you are faced with debilitating disease of any sort.
That's a really powerful film, thank you for sharing. I've thought a lot about assisted dying since my mum died and my sister got a terminal cancer diagnosis. Wendy's case is compelling and she articulates it so well that I agree with her when she speaks. And yet, I have read other accounts which make me pause. Apart from reports from other countries about 'mission creep' and what can happen when you allow or normalise something new, I was also affected by Andrew O'Hagan's account in Mayflies. I thought the surrounding relationships, and the effect of the decision to go to Dignitas had on these relationships, articulated really well in that book why the death of a human being is of a different order of things to the death of an animal. Esther Rantzen said on the Today programme the other morning that we allow our pets a more dignified death than our human loved ones, but that just made me think that yes, we will put a pet down but we will not put a human being down, and maybe it should stay that way. In any event, we need to talk about the subject with compassion but also with realism. Let's hope we can do that.