John's mother
Eleven years ago, my mother had a stroke and took seven months to die.
As her principal carer I divided my days into good days and bad days. A good day for me was when she said, ‘John, I want to die.’ A bad day was when she said, ‘John, please kill me.’
That was the only thing in her whole life that she had ever asked of me, and I didn’t love her enough to do it because of the legal consequences. Eventually she starved herself to death.
Now I live with the guilt: callous, cruel and selfish before God and my mother, but innocent before the law.
John Acton, first published in The Damage Done, August 2016