Gail O’Rorke - no regrets helping friend who wanted to die in dignity

"It's hard to be selfish in your grief when you know that the person needed and wanted this so much," says Gail O'Rorke, about the suicide of her friend Bernadette Forde.

“Every time I felt sad a little voice came into my head and said, ‘how can you feel sad about something that somebody wanted so much?’” she told Róisín Ingle, presenter of the Róisín Meets podcast.

Bernadette Forde suffered from Primary-Progressive Multiple Sclerosis, which meant that her health and quality of life was only ever going to deteriorate. Gail O’Rorke was her cleaner, but became her best friend and carer in the years before her death.

When Forde’s health had deteriorated to a point where she felt she could no longer go on, Gail made a failed attempt to arrange for them to travel to Dignitas in Switzerland, where she could have taken her own life.

In 2011, Bernadette Forde successfully procured a lethal drug over the internet and died in her home after taking it.

Four years later, Gail O’Rorke was acquitted of attempting to assist in her friend’s suicide. It was a harrowing ordeal but she would not change a thing “for all the tea in China”.

The youngest of five, Gail grew up with an unstable mother and a violent father, who she said was a sexual predator for her and her sister.

Aged 16, she tried unsuccessfully to run away from home. The next year she met the love of her life Barry, who she said saved her and was the first person who “loved me for who I was”.

Her upbringing left her emotionally damaged, but in a perverse way it made it possible for her to develop a close friendship with Bernadette Forde, who valued structure, order and control over her life.

Throughout her childhood, Gail was used to bending to other people’s needs and so she fitted in with the structure Forde demanded. Because of this the pair soon became close friends.

“We just clicked. We loved each other deeply,” she said.

Despite suffering a breakdown and having “an extremely tough year” following her trial, Gail says she does not have any regrets about trying to help her friend die with dignity and will continue to raise awareness around the issue.

It is far from a black and white subject, she said, but she believes that the majority of Irish people are in favour of euthanasia for others who may suffer like her friend Bernadette Forde did.

To listen to the full conversation between Gail O’Rorke and Róisín Ingle on the Róisín Meets Podcast, go to iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher or irishtimes.com

Crime or Compassion?: One Woman’s Story of a Loving Friendship That Knew No Bounds, by Gail O’Rorke, is published by Hachette Ireland