It sounds like a work of fiction; an elderly woman dressed only in her nightie and slippers being taken away by police while her family beg for her release. But it wasn’t. This was the scene unfolding right in front of me, and I was powerless to stop it. It was February 2018, my mom – as we call our mothers in the West Midlands – Mavis, had survived an attempt to take her own life along with my dad, Dennis, who passed away with her help.
He’d been suffering in agony from bowel cancer for over two years and had begged for her help to die. For this act of compassion, she spent 30 hours in a police cell and then, 18 months later, had to endure a trial for murder and manslaughter. This all happened because of cruel, outdated laws on assisted dying – laws I now campaign to change. My parents were happily married for 60 years. They would have done anything for one anothe