One Year On - 17th August 2012                                                         

“I have been so low and have felt many times like ending it all.  But I am afraid I am a coward.   I would do so, if I knew what would work successfully without pain. Hahaa.  People who say, ‘Ah yes!  She took the easy way out,’ haven’t a clue.  It takes enormous courage, which I have not had to this point.”

These words were written in an email to a friend less than a year before Gurli Bagnall passed away. 

I had many discussions with Gurli about euthanasia and how she might assist herself in bringing an end to it all. Her illness brought to her a slow deterioration in all aspects of her being.  The absolute hardest to cope with was the unmitigated pain and the frightening breathing difficulties that she suffered for many years. And all she had in her arsenal was Panadol and morphine.  Due to traumas in her earlier life she was not prepared to take any drugs that would impact on her cognitive abilities.  It’s likely that something would have eased the unrelenting pain but she was terrified of losing her mind as well. Being highly intelligent, for her, was a double-edged sword.  It meant she had a good grasp of what she was going through and what her options were. It also put her off-side with her doctor. The ego can be fragile when suggested treatment is questioned by a smart patient.

She trawled the internet looking for help, for ways in which she might take matters into her own hands when she felt she couldn’t take anymore.  We discussed it at length, how people suffering as she was, have nowhere and no one to turn to when they’ve had enough. How callous to leave someone suffering so!  We have rules in our country to protect animals from cruelty but no such provision is made for humankind. What kind of society do we live in?

New Zealand has debated this issue before and all we’ve had, in this democracy of ours, is a ‘conscience’ vote, when the 2003 ‘Death with Dignity Bill’ was defeated by 60 votes to 58. A vote that was cast by people who likely have never been in a situation where someone close to them is suffering. More recently National Party MP Maggie Barry has stated that our level of palliative care here in New Zealand is so high that we don’t need the option of euthanasia. Ms Barry speaks from experience because her father received excellent care in a hospice. Well, I am so very pleased for her family that this was the case. In my mother’s case ‘there was no room at the inn’.  As I discovered, a hospital is not a great place for a dying person. Without the support of hospice nurses and their valuable input with hospital staff things would have been considerably worse.

I’m left feeling that I let her down because I wasn’t willing to risk my freedom to help her. I shouldn’t feel guilty about this but I do. I wish I’d had the courage to help her as other people have helped their loved ones. It shouldn’t be this way. One year on and I still feel traumatised by my mother’s last terrible weeks and the horrible way she was treated in hospital after failing to cut her wrist deep enough to do a good job. Call that taking the easy way out? Do you have any idea of the courage it took for an elderly, weak, sick old lady to do that? I am so proud of her for trying where no one else would or, to be fair, where no one legally could, give her a hand.

Gurli suffered terribly and was an enormous inspiration to those she met. She was incredibly courageous. Watching someone you care deeply about suffer so much was heartbreaking.  Gurli is the woman I was proud to call ‘Mum’.

Rest in peace, Mum. You’re the bravest woman I know.  It really is time for the voting public to have a say and put a stop to this barbarism.