It was just over 50 years ago but I still remember it. I was in my early 20s and very active politically in the Labour Party. I had represented my Constituency Labour Party at the Labour Party Annual Conference and I went round all the wards giving my report of the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This particular meeting was held in the living room at the house of an elderly couple of longstanding Party members. I gave an eloquent report and looked forward to questions. But then the lady in whose home we were meeting noticed that her husband was sitting very still and looking extremely pale. He was dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now I know what you’re thinking: I had bored him to death. Whatever the true cause of his demise, the circumstances were remarkable. It had been so sudden and so pain-free that nobody had noticed. He died at home with his wife and his comrades. What a way to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This astonishing incident came back to my mind this week during a conversation that I had with an elderly patient in a local hospital where I am a volunteer. She told me about her husband – aged 99 1\/2 and looking forward to a message from the monarch. Astonishingly he had never been in hospital and took no medication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But one evening he was feeling tired, so he had a bath and went to bed early. He had eaten little that day so his wife – herself a sprightly 91 year old – took him some cereal. She gave him a spoonful but he did not swallow it. He looked her directly in the eyes, closed his eyes, and died. He did not make a sound. What a way to go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By contrast, I’ve been visiting a woman of around my own age (mid 70s) who is suffering from motor neurone disease. It affects her from the neck upwards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She cannot hold her head up without supporting her head with her hands. She cannot eat or drink so she receives nourishment through a tube in her stomach. She cannot speak so she writes on a small whiteboard. She cannot swallow so she has to use a suction machine to remove the phlegm. She fears that she will die from choking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She is very clear. She wants to die. But she cannot kill herself and the law does not allow anyone to assist her in ending her life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I guess we would all like to die like the first two people that I mentioned – quick and painlessly. But increasingly many of us are living longer in circumstances that we would like to bring to an end. We need a calm and rational debate about end of life and personal choice and politicians need to listen to the public and to the medical profession. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was just over 50 years ago but I still remember it. I was in my early 20s and very active politically in the Labour Party. I had represented my Constituency Labour Party at the Labour Party Annual Conference and I went round all the wards giving my report of the event. This particular meeting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28036"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28042,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28036\/revisions\/28042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}