A mother’s needless death and a parable for a society obsessed with money, self and sex

Over recent years we have got used to disturbing stories of sick, usually elderly people going off to a Swiss clinic or some other godforsaken place to end their lives with the injection of a lethal substance.

But now we have something new and much more alarming. As the Mail reports today, a 50-year-old woman, who was ill but potentially perfectly healthy, died over the weekend after refusing medical treatment.

A couple of weeks ago, Mr Justice MacDonald ruled in the secretive Court of Protection that this woman’s wish to die should be granted. It was said during the hearing that she had chosen death because she didn’t want to become old, poor and ugly, having devoted her life to money, men and her looks.

Doctors had argued that the woman — known during the hearing only as ‘C’ — should be made to accept kidney dialysis after a drug overdose landed her in hospital. They maintained the treatment would probably lead to a full recovery, and that her rejection of it indicated mental instability. The judge disagreed.

He didn’t appear to sympathise much with her decision — indeed, he agreed it might be considered ‘ unreasonable, illogical or even immoral’ — but said that despite having impulsive habits, she was perfectly capable of making up her own mind, and under the 2005 Mental Health Act had the right to refuse treatment. Since 1961, suicide in this country has not been a criminal act, though aiding and abetting it is.

Many people will say that it was her life, and she had the right to do with it as she chose. I suppose that is strictly true. But we all have obligations to one another. C had three daughters, one of them a teenager, to all of whom she was ‘completely indifferent’, according to the judge.

C had four marriages, each of which ended when the money ran out, and a number of affairs. She appears to have led a wealthy and privileged life.

It emerged during the hearing that she became angry when one of her daughters fell pregnant because being a grandmother would mean she was ‘past her sell-by date’. She drank an enormous amount and lived a life ( in the words of the judge) ‘ revolving largely around her looks, men, material possessions and “living the high life” ’.

Her vanity was such that last year she was said during the hearing to have turned down chemotherapy for breast cancer in case it affected her appearance, and refused to take prescribed medication for the illness because she said it made her fat.

Some will argue that she had every right to live a hedonistic life and to do exactly as she pleased as long as it was within the law.

My own view is that her life and death serve as a kind of parable for our value-free society, obsessed as it is with money, materialism, sex and celebrity. I see her as a sort of victim — responsible for her own excesses, to be sure, but also somehow misled and cast adrift.

Not very long ago — I mean only half a century or so — the story of C would have seemed almost incomprehensible. Of course, a few unfortunate people have always been driven to suicide, usually for personal reasons, very occasionally as a result of existential angst. But for a basically healthy person in middle age to turn her back on existence because the men and money have run out — well, that is a peculiarly modern story.

At the age of 50, she should have been looking forward to watching her children grow up, and to all the other joys which are part of getting older. Instead of seeing a new grandchild as a threatening reminder of her advancing years, she should have been be excited by the prospect of helping to nurture it and its successors, and of passing on a little of the wisdom that age and experience can bring.

Granted that she was an extreme case, it is undeniable that her reported obsession with youth and with warding off the evidence of ageing is a worrying feature of the modern age. To some degree, none of us relishes the wrinkles and greying hair and sagging chins that come with age, and a few unhappy souls pore over glossy magazines or lap up idiotic Channel 4 programmes to learn about the supposed miracles of plastic surgery or Botox in holding back the years.

But isn’t there a dignity in — old-fashioned phrase — ‘growing old gracefully’, and in embracing the privileges of age while accepting that eternal youth and confected beauty as exemplified by mindless celebrities are an empty con-trick?

All this C seemingly missed, schooled as she was in a society preoccupied with appearances and which also teaches that self-gratification and personal satisfaction are all that matter.

I note that there’s a total absence of any religious perspective in this story. God is not present. Nor is the Christian injunction that suicide is a sin recognised. It is an apparent paradox of Christianity that, although our worldly existence is to be viewed as a preparation for the joy of being reunited with God, life on this earth is nonetheless sacred.

AS Someone who struggles considerably with doubt, I am certainly not advocating Christian or any other religious belief as the only sure-fire route to fulfilment. But if C had even the vaguest apprehension of a Divine Being, she would surely not have devoted herself so much to her own pleasures, and she would not have yearned to quit this life so carelessly. After all, resilience and courage are pre-eminent Christian virtues.

I’m not inclined, by the way, to blame the judge. I assume he was only trying to interpret the law correctly and, rightly or wrongly, formed the view that she had not taken leave of her senses. His caustic comments about her behaviour imply a large measure of disapproval. One senses that if he could have stopped her killing herself, he would have done so.

Yet if only someone could have got to her in the last few days, and told her that her children and grandchild needed her, that life is more about giving than taking, and that all kinds of joys could have lain ahead as she grew older had she opened her heart. If only someone had told her it was not too late. But she has reportedly died alone, and who knows how greatly mourned.

Yes, it is a kind of tragedy, and not only for her. C’s life — her preoccupation with her appearance, her chasing after money, men and the hedonistic life, and her refusal to embrace the grace of old age — also speaks of an emptiness at the heart of today’s society.

In that one sense, this unfortunate woman was certainly far from being alone.