In 2009 my father was diagnosed with bowel cancer. By the time it was discovered, it had metastasised to his lungs. He was given an average of 18 months to live, but optimistically told me “I’m hoping for five years”.

My late husband JD loved Christmas more than anyone I’ve ever known. He did everything he could to make it special for the children and grandchildren, from beautiful dishes to decorations. So it was a shock that he took his life a week before Christmas in 2008.

My late father used to say that suffering from advanced emphysema was like gasping for air after running a marathon, and having a sock stuffed into your mouth. So when my sister Peggie Nairn also developed cigarette-induced emphysema she had some idea of what to expect.

Radio legend Howard Sattler stood up for the battlers and took on governments in his long career as the king of Perth talkback radio. Now with about a year left to live he says Western Australian politicians should listen to the people and allow voluntary assisted dying laws.

My aunt Roslyn Hamilton-Brown, my mother Eulalie Maria Celine Humphrey, and my father Stanley Maurice Humphrey.

Georgina Burns, or Gina as she was known to friends, met her future husband and the love of her life, John Burns, as a teenager in England. The pair later moved to Perth and then the Mid West city of Geraldton where they settled and raised daughters, Brooke and Ashe.

My father Ernest Alun Jones was a World War II veteran, a very stoic character.  I never heard Dad complain about anything his entire life, even when he was sick and dying, until they were draining his lungs with no anaesthetic. He was crying, begging me not to let them do it. Basically he was begging me daily to help him die. But they dragged it out to the last gasp.

My mother, Joan Freeth, died of breast cancer in a slow and painful death, propped up with morphine. I would have liked her to be able to go more easily without the horrific pain she suffered towards the end.

l'm a firm believer in life choices. That we all should have a choice if we want to go at a particular time. lf there's no future, then let us go.

My father Leslie Hounsome died in 2006 at the age of 86. He had been in nursing homes both in his former home of England and in Australia. He was becoming highly dependent because of kidney and heart problems. It was a balancing act of different medications to keep the two working and it reached the point where he realised he was going to have very frequent admissions to Joondalup Hospital. There was a buildup of fluid on the lungs compromising his breathing and certainly leaving him most uncomfortable.