AT 10AM yesterday, Tony Nicklinson finally got what he wanted. In his Wiltshire home, surrounded by those he loved, he slipped into a peaceful death.
Less than a week before, millions had seen him outside the high court in his wheelchair, racked with sobs. His wife, Jane, spoke to the TV cameras on his behalf, quietly explaining his distress at the refusal of a court to give him the assurance he had requested: that anyone who helped him to kill himself would not be charged with murder.
Once she paused, to wipe away his tears. Even those who disagreed with him, including the judges, were moved.
The draft judgment of the court had a devastating impact on Mr Nicklinson. His wife had told his lawyer, Saimo Chahal, that “the fight seemed to go out of him”. She added: “He said that he was heartbroken by the high court’s decision that he could not end his life at a time of his choosing with the help of a doctor.”
Mr Nicklinson (58) was paralysed from the neck down, only able to communicate by interacting with a computer through blinking and moving his head. But he had one option left – refusing food. This he did. Over the weekend, he contracted pneumonia and deteriorated rapidly.
He had made an advanced directive back in 2004, a year before a stroke paralysed his body during a trip to Athens, refusing any life-sustaining treatment.
In the end, he died without assistance, with Jane, his daughters, Beth and Lauren, and his sister Ginny beside him.
He escaped going to the Swiss assisted-dying group, Dignitas. “He doesn’t see why the hell he should have to go to a foreign country to die in the middle of an industrial estate,” his wife said.
Mr Nicklinson did not understand how the court could refuse his request for a dignified assisted suicide at home. When Ms Chahal, and Mr Nicklinson’s barrister, Paul Bowen QC, visited him last week, after the ruling, he spelled out on his computer: “So, we lost. In truth, I am crestfallen, totally devastated and very frightened. I fear for the future and the misery it is bound to bring. I suppose it was wrong of me to invest so much hope and expectation into the judgment but I really believed in the veracity of the arguments and quite simply could not understand how anybody could disagree with the logic. I guess I forgot the emotional component.”
The three judges who heard the case, Lord Justice Toulson, Mr Justice Royce and Mrs Justice Macur, said that in spite of their deep sympathy for Mr Nicklinson – and a second paralysed man known only as Martin, who also wanted help to die – it had to be for parliament, not the courts, to decide whether to change the law.
Mr Nicklinson, who had lived an active life before his stroke, playing sport and travelling around the world, found it unbearable to have to be fed by carers and moved from bed to wheelchair by means of a sling. He described his life as “dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable”.
He had been a civil engineer, working for a Greek company but based in the United Arab Emirates, where he was vice-chairman of the Arabian Gulf Rugby Football Union. – (Guardian service)