At 6am on a bleak February day in 2023, Catie and her sister watched their mum and dad leave in a taxi to the airport.
They knew they would never see their mum again. She was flying to Switzerland, where she would travel to a Dignitas clinic and die with the assistance of medical staff.
But the pair also did not know if they would see their dad again. He could have been stopped at the airport, and could have been charged with facilitating a crime.
‘You know, he went over with two of them and has come back one of them,’ said Catie, who asked for her surname not to be used.
She had not eaten at all on the day she went to pick her dad up following his return flight, unsure if he would even appear.
When he did walk through the arrival doors, he ‘just collapsed’.
Catie, who lives in Oxfordshire, said: ‘He was a broken man for a long time, for what he’d seen and what he’d been through. But he didn’t get a chance to grieve much because then he had to deal with all the paperwork and all the stress afterwards.’
On November 29, MPs will vote for the first time in nine years over whether or not to legalise assisted dying in the UK. The issue is highly charged, with passionate arguments on both sides of the debate.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has allowed a free vote on the issue, and his cabinet is split. Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood have spoken out against legalisation, while Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy have said they will vote for it.
Artist and teacher Catie, 36, argues that the current approach to assisted dying in the UK makes an extremely painful time even more complicated for families like hers.
She remembers her mum Alison as a ‘very intelligent, very talented woman’. A university lecturer teaching French and German, she knew six languages, and was also an accomplished folk musician.
But after moving into a new house in September 2021, it became clear Alison was not able to move her body as easily as she once did. Over the following months, her condition deteriorated.
Catie said: ‘This is the reason why her being a musician is so poignant as she could no longer play a concertina or her piano anymore.
‘She loved walking as well. She and Dad walked miles at the weekend, and, of course, that was no longer possible.’
In May 2022, when it became clear something was terribly wrong, Alison decided she would ultimately like to end her life at the Dignitas clinic. She did not tell either of her daughters. The following month, she received a diagnosis of motor neurone disease.
It was not until October that Alison told Catie and her sister about her plans to travel to Switzerland.
‘It made sense that mum would want to do it because of the person she was,’ said Catie.
‘And I completely supported it because we knew what the end of the disease entailed. It was going to be horrible. Absolutely horrible. But then I was kind of shocked because it was something you never expect to happen in your life.’
Alison stayed for one last Christmas and a number of family birthdays at the beginning of 2023, before taking the taxi to the airport in February.
‘You knew she wasn’t coming back and, yeah, we kept it together because we knew mum couldn’t fall apart as she was leaving,’ Catie said.
‘But once that taxi disappeared, my sister and I, we just collapsed on the floor.’
Due to the nature of her mum’s death, there was little time to process what had happened.
Catie remembered her ashen-faced dad David realising he would have to tell doctors his wife would not be showing up for her scheduled appointments, without knowing how much he would be able to reveal.
She said: ‘You can’t grieve. It’s too stressful. There’s too much going on, and it’s all horrible. Then you have to decide which family members to tell and how people are going to react and it’s just a horrendous process.’
Since then, Catie has campaigned alongside the group Dignity in Dying. She has spoken in Parliament to advocate for assisted dying and met Kim Leadbeater, who introduced the latest bill.
Many MPs are reportedly undecided about how they will vote on November 29, with opponents raising concerns about people feeling pressured into choosing assisted death as they are worried about becoming a burden on their families.
Wes Streeting has also suggested the introduction of assisted dying would come at the expense of other parts of the NHS, and that palliative care in the UK is not at a sufficient standard where terminally ill people would have ‘a real choice’.
The last time the issue was put to a vote in Parliament was in 2015, when MPs decided against it by 330 votes to 118.
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