Charlie took us onto the front line of a battle that, one day, we all must face

CHARLIE Bird’s great gift as a reporter was that, no matter where he stood – whether at Ground Zero after 9/11, outside David Drumm’s door in 2008 or in Barack Obama’s White House on St Patrick’s Day – it always felt like we were all standing with him.

He was the epitome of the ‘everyman’ journalist, his unfiltered reactions and his almost childlike curiosity chiming effortlessly with the viewer’s own. It was reporting in its truest sense. If he was covering a grand occasion it was as though we’d all sneaked in behind him for a gawk, and if it was a horror show, Charlie, below, was our tribune in the places we’d never wish to be.

And this gift for being our eyes and ears in the most extreme human circumstances never stood him in better stead than in his final years.

With the same raw candour with which he reported from battle zones, earthquakes, famine and riots, Charlie’s despatches from the last great frontier were courageous and unflinching. And it was probably the most relevant reportage he ever did because, unlike his coverage of the killing fields of Rwanda or the Haitian earthquake, this time it was the front line of a battle we’ll all have to face.

This time it wasn’t one we could sit out on the comfort of our sofas, certain of our safety – one day, sooner or later, we’ll all be that lone warrior.

In the two-and-a-half years since his diagnosis with that most terrifying of conditions, Motor Neurone Disease, Charlie shared his unenviable perspective, in his own distinctive style, with an extraordinary generosity. Instead of crawling into a corner to rail against the malign cruelty of a disease that left him doomed and voiceless, he thwarted its efforts to silence him and embraced with exuberant defiance what life was left to him. And he shared his journey with us, reporting from that frightening front line every step of the way.

He told of his good days and his bad days, happily announcing the odd bit of positive news but never putting a false gloss on his mood, revealing candidly how he wept daily at the sheer awfulness of his plight. If you were having a bad day yourself, there was Charlie Bird on social media delighting in the smallest victories, the kind messages from strangers, a boost for his charity campaigns in the face of the most fearful fate, and you could only feel grateful for your own minor troubles.

After Vicky Phelan appeared on The Late Late Show, speaking about her own terminal diagnosis, the two made contact on social media because, as Vicky put it, ‘We have a lot in common… unfortunately!’

They met up and formed such an instant bond that, Charlie said, ‘we hit it off as if we were long-lost friends’.

In her final months, Vicky became an avid campaigner for assisted dying, and last week’s decision by the Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying to recommend legislation for the option was due in no small part to her efforts. Charlie himself was more circumspect about the possibility.

‘I haven’t worked out where I’m going to end up and how,’ he said, ‘but I will eventually have to make up my own mind… Whatever I decide in the future I believe that all of us, if we see somebody who is in a dark place, we should put our arms around them and don’t hide from it.’

If you could sum his legacy up in a single sentence that’d be it: don’t hide from it. Don’t hide from the truth (see what happened to David Drumm when he tried to duck down behind the front door as Charlie peered in!), don’t hide from the reality, don’t hide from the pain, the fear, the uncertainty, the grief, because they will all have their due in the end.

We are facing into what will surely be a desperately divisive and difficult debate about assisted suicide and euthanasia. The objections to the proposal will be as valid and sincere as the support of the advocates, and both sides will have to be heard with respect and understanding.

There are legitimate reservations about the whole concept, and it is undeniable that in some countries the ‘slippery slope’ was a well-founded fear.

We’ve been promised that depression and disability will not be grounds for assisted suicide here, but opponents say there’s no way to predict what future governments may do.

And yet, on the other hand, who would wish a painful, slow death on anyone if there was a humane option in terminal circumstances?

An effective debate will require honesty on both sides – not the sort of dissembling we saw in the recent referendums – and hard realities will have to be faced. In memory of Charlie Bird, who faced that journey with such courage, let’s not hide from it.