LETTING MUM GO WOULD BE ‘ACT OF LOVE’
“PLEASE respect my mum enough to return her dignity to her.” That is the emotional plea from Toowoomba Reverend Beverley Thorogood. After more than 30 years of asking why someone cannot have the choice to end their own life, she penned a gut-wrenching letter to a parliamentary inquiry that will look at voluntary assisted dying. Sharing her personal pain that has spanned decades, she revealed the emotional experience of witnessing both her parents plead for death. For her mother, a peaceful end and the right to make a choice would represent “an act of love”.
FOR more than 30 years, Reverend Beverley Thorogood has lived a heartbreaking experience, watching on as both her parents begged to be allowed to die.
It all started in the years leading up to 2002 when her father asked to be “let go” after a horrid period battling illness.
“He pleaded to die, he demanded to die, he asked to have the right to have control over his life and death,” Rev Thorogood told The Chronicle.
Now she is living through the same ordeal with her 91year-old mother, Clarice.
Rev Thorogood’s emotional submission to the Inquiry Into Voluntary Assisted Dying detailing the gut-wrenching decisions she has had to make for her mother is one of many calling on the government to act.
She is sharing her story in the hopes of removing the stigma surrounding conversations about death.
“There are no words to see your loved one pleading to be allowed to die,” Rev Thorogood said.
“Before her brain began to shut down she said ‘promise me Bev, promise me you won’t make me live like that’.
“She is living the life she pleaded with me to not let her live - and that stinks.
“She hasn’t known me for five years, she doesn’t speak, she has no facial expressions, all her food is jelly because she can’t chew or swallow.”
Reverend Thorogood joked that it was “a bugger of a subject”.
For her, however, the debate comes down to two things dignity and respect.
“It may take a few beers or glasses of wine to get the conversation going, but that’s okay,” she said.
“Stand with my father as he sobs, because he looked at me and said ‘a man shouldn’t have to live like this, let me go’.
“People expect that because I am a priest I would be closer on the spectrum to the rightto-lifers ... it’s not up to me to beat someone around the head with a crucifix.”
The inquiry will hand down a report in November after a number of hearings later this year.
The Toowoomba local has offered to talk directly to the committee, if asked.
“It was time 30 years ago, I don’t think we could have had the conversation 30 years ago,” Rev Thorogood said.
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