The Last Right Marianne Thamm (beach read book .TXT) 📖

While there is no singular, universally accepted definition of “suicide”, it is generally taken to mean “the intentional taking of one’s life”.*

However, the majority of the world’s suicides occur in circumstances of extreme anguish where an individual, for various reasons, is under severe mental pressure, be it as a consequence of external material conditions, clinical depression or other mental illnesses.

Doctors generally accept “suicide” to be a premature death, hastened out of despair and where judgment may have been impaired.

However, in light of the growing international debate surrounding self-deliverance, euthanasia, assisted suicide or mercy killing, as it is variously called, perhaps it is time to relook at the semantics and in so doing widen the scope of discussion and debate. It was one of Craig’s hopes that his life and death would contribute to this ongoing debate.

Should a decision by a rational individual who is deemed “of sound mind” and who opts, within a set of legal and ethical protocols, to end his or her life due to a terminal illness or life-threatening condition still fall within the accepted definition of suicide?

By all accounts, from those who loved, knew him or came to know him well, Craig’s decision to cut short his life was a rational and autonomous one. It was a decision that he knew would bring with it overwhelming sorrow and pain to those who loved him, but one that would also require of him an almost superhuman strength to “untie the strong and mighty bonds of life” as the Bohemian-Austrian existential poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, observed.

Rev. Irvine is a seasoned pastoral counsellor with over 40 years’ experience. He was the founder of the now well-known LifeLine counselling service, is a former director of the SA Aids Foundation and the founder of the Institute for Spirituality, Wholeness and Reconciliation, an interfaith organisation.

He spent four months listening to and counselling Craig about his decision.

Rev. Irvine viewed Craig, he explains, as a “mystery” rather than a problem and in so doing was able to journey with him and accomplish Rilke’s directive that we “develop a deep and painful curiosity to explore this loss completely, to experience the peculiarity, the singularity, and the effects of it in our life”.

Craig was a devout Christian who, from his writings and various comments, believed that God or a Heavenly Father would welcome him after his death. He believed that God accepted and loved him as he was and would not judge or reject him for ending his life, which had become, for him, unbearable.

Rev. Irvine found that Craig was neither angry with God nor his illness, that he had tried hard to live with it but that he had simply had enough. NF, Craig said, had caused him pain and suffering and had resulted in his spending much of his life in hospital. He believed the disease limited him, his life experience, his health and his ability to form long-term, meaningful relationships with his peers and women his own age.

He described himself as a brave soldier who had grown weary of the ongoing battle.

Because of his faith and deeply held belief, Craig did not want to kill himself. He wanted his life to end legally, peacefully, listening to his favourite music while his mother and father held him as he exhaled his last breath.

He believed that Dignitas, an organisation based in Switzerland, established in 1998 by lawyer Ludwig Minelli and the only one in the world to offer foreign nationals assisted suicide, would grant him that wish. (See Part 2 Chapter 1 for a more comprehensive international perspective on assisted suicide.) For the first time in his life, Craig – after finding Dignitas on the Internet – felt he would be “in control” of his life.

It is unsurprising then that four months later, when the organisation responded that he had not got the “green light”, he was disappointed and angry.

Dignitas informed Craig via email that physicians who had reviewed his case were of the opinion that he should undergo one last surgery to remove the tumour growing between the muscles in his upper left arm before reapplying.

Considering Craig’s youth and the covertly ambivalent tone of the two supporting doctors’ letters he submitted with his application, it was not an unreasonable response.

But Craig had made up his mind.

He did not want to spend six months recovering from the surgery and had been preparing himself, spiritually and physically, for death. The anger that Craig must have been holding but could not express elsewhere became focused on Dignitas and he railed against the organisation in several emails to friends and family.

I have always from the beginning had a Plan B. It has got to the stage where I may very well have to use it, he told Sandy Coffey, a magazine features writer and photographer, whom he was meeting with almost daily.

(See Chapter 16 for a comprehensive correspondence between them.)

As Craig began to prepare and think about other options, his family, extended family and friends were drawn into the tragedy that unfolded during the last four months of his life.

His parents Patsy and Neville; his beloved Nana (grandmother Ethel Schonegevel); Nontsebenzo Mjebeza, or Sarah, his “second mom” who had known him since he was three; Sandy, a mother of two teenage sons; his uncle and aunt, Brian and Rensche Gilbertson, in London; his past paediatrician, Dr John Wickens; Rev. Irvine; and others were all drawn in.

Without a set of protocols to deal with the profundity of the situation, they were flung into a maelstrom they were ill equipped to deal with.

Craig’s suffering and his unwavering wish to die a dignified death also became the suffering of his parents. Not only did they have to contain and support Craig through his various illnesses, they now needed to support him with his decision.

For Patsy and Neville, having to let their son “go” was to become the ultimate act of selfless, unconditional love they would need to offer. There was no room for them during those months to experience or