THE FINAL JOURNEY
ANN IS SITTING IN A WINDOWLESS and sparsely furnished white room with high ceilings and a red concrete floor. There is a bed in the corner, next to shelves full of medical equipment. She seems small against the large black sofa, her hands clasped together to minimise the involuntary swaying caused by her Parkinson’s disease. She is in pain, she is tired and, for the first time that day, she is getting a little anxious. She is waiting for someone to arrive with the drug that will kill her. Her fear is not of dying; she passed that point a long time ago. She is worried about the pharmacy’s supplies, suddenly scared that the people in whose hands she has put her death could let her down.
Ann Bruce, my aunt and my friend, died in Switzerland on 26 June 2021 at the age of 73. She was a quiet, intelligent woman, slender and unassuming, yet determined and plain-speaking. She started her career as a doctor, and ended it as a psychotherapist. She sang, she held legendary dinner parties, and she adored the theatre – she was the master of her successful life.
She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s seven years ago, and knew then that she did not want to let the disease run its full course. She told me that, for her, nothing tasted right any more, literally and metaphorically: “I can still enjoy things like the first snowdrop, bits of nature coming to life. But there’s not enough. My life is still good. What’s gone is my capacity to engage with it and embrace it and enjoy it.”
As a doctor, but also as a friend and relative, she had witnessed so many people’s last days. Perhaps she had seen too much. Her parents were pragmatic people who both told her they would want to have an assisted death “if they had something nasty and incurable”. But neither got their wish. Her father died of lung cancer, and her mother died in a nursing home after a long and slow decline – towards the end, she needed help
