Peter’s wife was holding his hand and frankly, as a bystander, I can’t be sure of the point where he departed this world for the next. A kind Swiss lady called Erika, not wearing any kind of official uniform, but gently in charge all the same, knelt beside him while outside the picture window of the little house in which we were gathered the snow fell gently. Everything was silent and on the veranda outside, Erika’s husband, Horst, who looked like your favourite grandfather, smoked his, yes, incredibly big and curly pipe, the smoke gently mixing with the falling snow. He was outside because, you see, although assisted dying is legal in Switzerland it would appear that smoking indoors is now the last taboo. No wonder the whole experience was for me so memorably surreal.
And Christine? She leaned over to ask me if I was all right. I am not a natural or promiscuous hugger but I hugged that day.
The police arrived shortly after, to check that what had happened was within the law. They were not unpleasant but neither were they friendly; they were just, well, the police, doing their job. As we waited, one of them came up to us and simply said “BBC?” and took our mumbled word for it, the BBC of course being internationally known as the body who would not be party to any hanky-panky. And in my mind, I waved a little Union Jack.
I am in no doubt that the BBC will be criticized for showing the death of the good man who was Peter Smedley, who died between his wife and an attentive nurse while the snow fell slowly outside. After the Dimbleby Lecture I gave last year where I first put forth my support for assisted dying in theory, a cross-party collection of MPs proposed a vote of censure against the BBC, clearly being unaware that, in a democracy, it is not against the law to argue peacefully for a change in the law. But the fact is that Peter and Andrew dragged themselves to Switzerland to die with the dignity they feared that they would not get in Britain. More have gone since then, often at great cost.
Politicians, fearful of full in-trays from the ultrareligious, mutter phrases like “the sanctity of life” without defining what they mean, or why. They murmur “It’s all very complicated,” when it is in essence very simple; my father understood it and so did my mother and really, I suspect, so do most people in this country.
States in the U.S.A. and sensible, stable countries here in Europe have found ways of creating a sensible way of allowing assisted dying for those that request it without any collateral damage to the society as a whole. The templates are there, even though I think we could do better.
A year ago a senior Tory shrugged me off on this subject with “That sort of thing should be left to doctors.” Perhaps by now he knows that it is left to doctors in Holland and Belgium and Switzerland and, indeed, parts of the U.S.A. France and Italy do not have any formal system of assisted dying, probably because of too much religion, while Germany does not, very emphatically does not, because of too much history. But why not here? And the answer had better be more sophisticated than “God won’t like it” or “It’s very difficult” or “How do you protect the vulnerable?” The answer to that is: quite easily, with a little thought and a little willingness and some cognizance of the term “the freedom of the individual,” a concept coming under some strain here in Britain. The same old arguments against will be rolled out by those that repeatedly pose the questions and then don’t listen to the answers and, I fear, men and women in some distress, and certainly at some cost, will continue to make their way to Switzerland to the embarrassment of the Swiss and the shame of the British.
Will I be one of them? I certainly hope not. I suspect that I am just like you, and like Peter and Andrew, in wanting to die peacefully at home, surrounded by my loved ones. I do not think that it is too much to demand.
A WEEK IN THE DEATH OF TERRY PRATCHETT
The bestselling author and Alzheimer’s sufferer reflects on the days following his controversial right-to-die documentary
The Independent, 18 June 2011
Monday
D-Day; that’s Documentary Day on the calendar here in our office. We spend the morning piling into the ever-present workload until it’s time to head off to watch the documentary with the director, Charlie Russell, and his family and friends.
There is just enough time for a drink and a nibble before we’re on air. Absolute silence in the room except for the occasional muffled sob as the story of Peter and Andrew unfolds and, at the end, the release and the discussion. I am glad there was a discussion, because there was a lot to be discussed.
A short break and then a BBC Newsnight special with Jeremy Paxman, David Aaronovitch, Liz Carr, Dinah Rose QC, Debbie Purdy, the Rt. Revd. Michael Langrish, the Bishop of Exeter (who was at least open to arguments, unlike some bishops), and also, I was glad to see, Erika Preisig, whom I met and admired in Switzerland.
I was surprised to hear from Erika that a Roman Catholic priest had come to Dignitas and had spoken to her, had agreed that it wasn’t his time, had told her she was doing a good thing, and came back later and did indeed go through with his assisted death. I have a lot of time for Dr. Preisig. She is a Christian, but understands those who beg for an assisted death; like me she has been appalled at some of the terrible outcomes of “traditional” suicides.
Tuesday
The documentary was not made to encourage, dismay, or condone, it was made to see. I was also hoping that it would lead to discussion and it certainly has done so.
And under Jeremy Paxman’s tactful arbitration, views were aired and discussed in a reasonably civilized way. With a sigh of relief, my assistant Rob and I hurtled into the city to grab what rest we could, getting, in my case, no more than two hours’ sleep before heading to the sofa in the BBC Breakfast studio. Rob, sitting next to me in the cab, was trying to keep up with the tweets and reported that they were coming in at a rate of more than one a second with an approval/disapproval rating of 99.9 percent. One of the objections being against Rob’s Russian naval officer’s hat, which he thinks is rather spiffy, but there is no accounting for taste. Other online discussions seemed positive, too, with objections being more about the running of Dignitas than whether assisted dying should be available here in the U.K.
As I feel I have to keep saying, I don’t want to be a publicist for Dignitas, but the unfortunate fact is that for a Briton who wants an assisted death, Dignitas represents the only choice and five more of our citizens have quietly made their way there since the documentary was filmed.