I have one or two heroes, and one or two heroines. One of my heroines is a lady named Ilora Finlay. Please don't tell her. She would probably be embarrassed.Ilora Finlay is a member of the House of Lords. A baroness, no less. She opposes assisted suicide and euthanasia, and argues eloquently against their legalisation.
What some people didn't know as she vigorously opposed an assisted suicide bill in the House of Lords a few years ago was that her 84-year-old mother, who had advanced breast cancer that had spread to large areas of her pelvis and lower back, was lying in a hospice wanting to die.
The old lady didn't want to be dependent. She didn't want to be a burden. And if assisted suicide were legal, it was clear, she would go for it. The situation, Lady Finlay said, was tearing her in two.
I'm a professor of palliative care. I have dedicated my career as a physician to improving the care of the terminally ill - and yet here was my dreadfully sick mother, stopping just short of asking me to help her die. . .
It was the hospice chaplain who unlocked the door. Wise enough to realise there was no point talking about God to this agnostic lady and experienced enough to know we all have a story, he quietly and patiently asked Mum to tell him hers.
And so he sat, this quiet, unassuming man, and listened, soaking up the years, as she told him her views and philosophy on life.
And it was in this telling that it dawned on Mum that her decrepit body still held an active mind. Suddenly, she realised that if she wasn't going to be allowed to kill herself, she had better make the most of what time remained. . .
Day by day, she took more pain relief, which first enabled her to get out of bed and then to take a few tentative steps with a Zimmer frame. Every day, she tried to take a few steps more. . .
And then, almost miraculously, the radiotherapy began to work, her pain disappeared and she was able to leave the hospice and go home.
My mother would go on to live for another four years and it's no exaggeration to say that those four years were almost more precious than the 84 that had preceded them. . .
Carers came every day. Friends visited, took her out, shared meals, laughed with her as she decided to get out of her wheelchair, using it as a walker and then dispensing with it altogether. She remembered that she had a story to tell, and began to tell it to her children for the first time.
She saw the birth of her first great-grandson, and relished playing with him. She was determined to stay involved, reading story books to him about steam engines and teddy bears. Then she cradled her second great-grandson in her arms.
Eventually illness came back, and she had to return to the hospice. But this time there was a difference: While she did, on occasion, long for the end, Mum did not ask for help to end her life this time. Any anger at her dependence and illness had gone and now 'Thank you' was her most uttered phrase.
Eventually death came. Says Lady Finlay: Of course, there are regrets - of times not spent together, of disagreements, of unappreciated times, of failing to call, of speaking in anger and in haste.
But I will never regret that our law protected her; preventing her from ending her life when she was vulnerable to despair.
Those four years we shared were the most precious gift. Without them, Mum would have missed what she described as some of the richest times in her life and we would have missed understanding just what an amazing person she was.
I'm so grateful for the fact she was 88 when she died and not 84. But best of all? So was she.
You can read the full account, originally published in the Daily Mail, right here.
