Assisted Dying: ‘My Friend’s Dignified Death Convinced Me We Need to Let the Light In’

Watching the Conservative MP Danny Kruger hold forth on BBC Newsnight on the “slippery slope” into casualised medical murder down which the UK would supposedly slide if Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is voted through on Friday, it was clear to me that Kruger’s supremely confident opinion on the issue was unassailable by any amount of factual counter-evidence that might be put to him. 

But I wondered if he would feel the same if he’d seen how assisted dying actually works in other countries that allow their citizens this fundamental right.

In 2018 I was able to see this at close quarters when a good friend, the Dutch artist Simon Kingma, suffering from the final stages of kidney cancer, opted to be helped to die by his doctors.

Simon, a wonderfully gifted painter and sculptor who’d been living with his family near me in Cornwall, had been fighting the cancer for two years and had undergone chemotherapy and surgery in both the UK and Holland. He moved back to Amsterdam partly because his experience of our underfunded NHS had convinced him that he would get a higher standard of medical care in the Netherlands.  

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But he also knew that if he stayed in the UK he faced the likelihood of an agonising death and no legal possibility of avoiding this.

Earlier in his life, Simon had worked for many years as an intensive care nurse. He was no stranger to terminal illness and knew just how awful some deaths can be. He also had a low tolerance for morphine, which for many people is the most effective pain relief available. As the cancer progressed, other painkillers were also proving ineffective at keeping his pain at tolerable levels. 

When it became clear that the cancer was terminal, Simon knew that prolonging his life for the few weeks that remained would be utterly wretched. 

He had decided several months earlier that he would rather go at the time of his choosing than face such a death. But in Holland this is not simply a matter of ticking a box. You have to have a series of interviews with at least two different doctors, who must also speak with your next of kin to make sure that they are not putting pressure on you to go in this way. 

These doctors must be satisfied that you’re suffering from a terminal illness and that you’re of sound mind, both when you first make this decision and at every subsequent stage of the process. They take great pains to be sure of this – the idea that Dutch doctors are prepared to casually dispatch their patients is nonsense. 

Earlier, Simon’s sister, also suffering from terminal cancer, had also opted for assisted dying. This had been approved by the necessary two doctors but, when the time came, she’d had an alcoholic drink with friends and family before the arrival of the doctor who’d agreed to help her. This doctor decided that the alcohol had potentially impacted on her mental state, so he couldn’t be certain that she would not otherwise have changed her decision. Her death had to be postponed. 

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When Simon decided the time had come, all the paperwork had to be checked for a final time by a public attorney. He was then able to say goodbye to friends and family in a fully conscious state, as he had wished, before the doctor arrived at his home.

He died in the arms of his wife, peacefully, painlessly and with dignity. 

I arrived in Amsterdam a couple of days later to help with funeral arrangements. Simon’s body was still lying at his home, as is common in the Netherlands, and the expression on his face was one of great peace. 

The funeral, which was really more of a celebration of Simon’s life, was held at a secular venue with sweeping views over the water. I’d helped to install a selection of Simon’s art as part of this, but in my speech I talked about a work of his that hangs in my home, one of a series of paintings of walls that he’d done during his last couple of years. 

It’s a deceptively simple painting. On the one level, perhaps, a faithful portrayal of the cracks in a wall. But it’s a wall that’s been observed with incredible attention by someone who really knew how to look.

I’d been thinking of that painting a lot, and still do, because it seems to express so much about Simon. His quiet patience, his insight. And I’d been wondering whether he’d been painting that series of walls because of the wall that he was facing in his own life, the wall that we’ll all face sooner or later. 

I can’t see this painting now without hearing Leonard Cohen’s words: “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

As a Dutch citizen, Simon was able to find a crack in that wall that he was able to slip through in the way and at the time of his choosing. My hope is that, when they vote on Friday, MPs will not once again cement over the possibility of a humane change in our own law to allow this same freedom. 

It’s time to let the light in.