In this country, we are taught to keep fighting. To plough on.
But as soon as I arrived in Basel, Switzerland, it felt clear that the Swiss have a very different approach to death.
They are practical and pragmatic, but compassionate.
Assisted dying has been legal there since 1942.
And when I asked Lifecircle’s president Dr Erika Preisig why Switzerland is the only country in the world which allows non-residents to travel there to die, she replied simply: “Because it is a human right.”
Dr Preisig’s foundation helps around 80 people per year to end their life and people travel from across the globe to die on their
own terms.
The fear is that the day-to-day work of helping people to die would make you detached or callous to the enormous responsibility that comes with facilitating someone’s death. However, it never felt like this was something the team at Lifecircle undertook lightly.
Indeed, Dr Preisig herself was acquitted of murder in 2019 over assisting the death of a woman in her 60s with a psychiatric condition but was found to have violated the handling of the drug Sodium Pentobarbital.
An appeal court upheld her acquittal this year, but the case could still be appealed again in the Swiss federal courts.
You could see the weight of the court case on Dr Preisig.
Yet despite the personal risks, her commitment to Lifecircle and her belief in assisted dying remains unchanged. She even invited Dawn, her friends and I to her home for dinner on the night before she died.
It is hard to know what to say to someone on their last night alive and I was feeling ill-prepared for dinner table conversation. Part of me expected to see some kind of release in Dawn – some freedom that comes from knowing you have nothing left to lose. But she had no grand plans for her last night on this earth and seemed quiet and reflective.
On the short walk from the car back to her hotel, Dawn stumbled, wincing in pain, as her hip failed her.
So the following morning when I watched her struggle slowly up the steps to Lifecircle it was moving to think these were the last few steps she would ever make.
Lifecircle is laid out much like an apartment – art on the walls, a big sofa, a table and a bed in the corner. It is not sterile like a hospital, but never-the-less as I stepped into the room it was strange to consider how many people died there.
I confess at first I found Dawn’s choice harder to understand than some others. She did not look like a woman at death’s door and her complaints were varied and complex.
But I have never walked a day in her shoes and it was clear to me that she had fought to get the death she wanted.
The assisted dying debate is serious and complex. It is high time it was given proper scrutiny by UK lawmakers.
Leaving seriously ill Brits feeling they must travel abroad – sometimes before they wish – is not a long-term solution.
