In the Midst of Life

horrified me as much as the newsreel pictures of the Belsen and Auschwitz victims whichwere first shown in British cinemas in 1945, and which I saw when I was ten years old.
    ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’
    ‘That’s because you were indoctrinated when you were a child. You need to be more of a free thinker.’
    I felt ashamed. I didn’t know that I was indoctrinated. It was a horrid word, I thought. I wanted to be a free thinker.
    ‘You must take some of the newsletters of the Humanist Association. That will open up your mind. Now, let’s have a cup of tea before you go, and some cake. My mother is a good cook, I’ll say that much for her.’
    I tucked into cake and biscuits, then cycled back to the hospital with a comfortably full stomach, but uncomfortable thoughts.
    The next time I visited Mrs Cunningham, she was studying a document received from the British Humanist Association entitled
The Right to Die.
    Abruptly she said, ‘I have signed an advance directive, instructing that, if I become ill, and the illness is incurable, I request voluntary euthanasia. I have placed a copy of this document with my son, my daughter, my doctor and my lawyer.’ She looked thoroughly pleased with herself.
    I had heard of euthanasia, but had not given it much thought. In the course of my work I had seen people die and had thought a good deal about death, but it had never occurred to me that we, in the medical professions, could actually put someone down as you would a dog.
    ‘It makes absolute sense. I don’t want to suffer needlessly. When my time comes I want my life to end swiftly and painlessly.’
    ‘That’s what everyone wants,’ I said.
    ‘Yes, and it’s everyone’s right – or should be. The law needs changing, and we Humanists are trying to bring it up in Parliament. Anyway, I have signed this directive. I consider it the only rational thing to do. I have discussed it with James and with Evelyn, and they both agree.’
    ‘What does your doctorsay?’
    ‘He won’t commit himself. He says it would probably cause more trouble than it alleviates. But he respects my wish to die with dignity.’
    ‘Dignity? Wherever did you get that idea from? Death is not dignified, any more than birth is.’
    ‘Well, that’s the expression the Euthanasia Society has adopted.’
    ‘The people who run your society don’t know what they are talking about! No one dies with dignity. That only happens in the cinema when someone says a sad farewell, then his head falls sideways and he dies. It doesn’t happen in real life, I can assure you. Films either make death look romantic, or horrific. It’s neither.’
    I giggled as only teenage girls can giggle.
    ‘I don’t think you are taking this seriously enough,’ Mrs Cunningham said severely. ‘Thoughtless girl. When my time comes, I want an easy death. I want to be able to go to sleep, like having an injection before an operation. You don’t feel a thing. When death begins to overtake me, and bungles the process of dying, I shall want a competent doctor to assist nature and make a good clean job of it.’
    ‘It all sounds too easy to me.’
    ‘I have always been in control of my own life, and I intend to be in control of my death.’
    That had been almost ten years before, and when Mrs Cunningham was admitted to the Marie Curie Hospital I honestly didn’t recognise her: an old lady, very bent, with sparse straggly hair and a wild look about her. After surgery, she had spent a fortnight in a convalescent home to build her up and improve her strength before the radium treatment, but, nonetheless, she was so thin that every bone in her body stuck out. Her eyes were sunken, and her grey-white skin was drawn tightly over her high cheekbones, making her nose and ears look huge. Her lips were without colour and pinched tightly together above a pointed chin. No, I would not have known her; but she recognised me.
    ‘You’re the child I used to know in Reading, aren’t you?’
    Yes, I am,’ I said with suddenrecognition.
    ‘A stupid girl, I remember. What are you doing here?’
    ‘I’m the ward sister.’
    I held out my arm to assist her as she walked. She pushed it aside.
    ‘Leave me alone – there’s nothing wrong with me. Ward sister, you say? That doesn’t sound too good. I dare say you are as ignorant now as you were then.’
    She reached the empty bed that had been kept for her.
    ‘What do you mean by putting me here? I expected a private room.