A grieving son remembers the moment his dad phoned to say he was going to kill himself in a heartbreaking new Express documentary.
Gareth Ward, 48, is backing efforts to change the law after his father Norman’s death in 2021 left his family traumatised.
The former Welsh Guardsman, 75, had been diagnosed 15 years earlier and the cancer eventually spread to his lungs, bones, spleen and pancreas.
Gareth said: “It gradually got worse and it got to the point where his pain and suffering was too much for him to take.
“One Thursday afternoon he phoned me up and said: ‘I can’t take another night like last night. I’m going to shoot myself, so goodbye.”
Gareth immediately called 999 and his sisters. Tragically, one sister who lived near their dad arrived before the police and witnessed the aftermath of her father’s desperate act.
Gareth said Norman’s disease “took what was once a hugely independent, proud man, to a guy who couldn’t do a great deal for himself.
“That’s bad enough but obviously the pain was the main thing. His life was effectively over, he knew it. It was just a matter of time before he died and that time would have been horrible.
“I know my dad would have chosen assisted dying over shooting himself.”
Had assisted dying been permitted, Norman could have discussed his wishes openly, giving his loved ones the opportunity to support him through a more humane process.
Gareth added: “Look at how different it could have been. We all could have talked about it as a family and come to terms with it, and been there, with him and for him when he did that, rather than him sitting on his own in the garden and having to go through that in secret.”
Filmed over eight months, the Express documentary “Assisted Dying: The strongest case for dignity in death?” is available on YouTube.
It tells the stories of those affected by the UK’s ban on assisted dying, including a woman who accompanied her husband to Dignitas, a terminally ill father of two with MND and a single mum with incurable breast cancer.