The widow’s agony that’s a lesson in true compassion

Towards the end of a blameless life, perhaps the last place Mavis Eccleston expected to find herself was in the dock of stafford Crown Court, accused of murdering her own husband.

Mavis and her dennis, a retired miner, had been married for nearly 60 years. They had raised a family, run a home, lived a life, side-byside. They had promised to love each other until death did them part, and they kept their word.

when the dark bloom of cancer unfurled into their lives, as it does to millions of luckless families, everything changed.

Life dissolved into the grim routines of terminal illness; of hospitals, medical appointments, adjusted prescriptions, dashed hopes and worry, worry, worry.

By the time dennis was in the late stages of bowel cancer, he couldn’t take the pain or the indignity any more. He wanted to go to dignitas but had left it too late to travel abroad.

so the couple made a plan — one that went horribly wrong.

Last February, their botched suicide pact ended in his death and her arrest.

How did this happen?

ONE hopes the police and medical authorities will act with tact and understanding in such circumstances. Yet this time it was different. For reasons of confusion or perhaps trying to protect her late husband, Mavis apparently told two mental health nurses she had given him a lethal dose of prescription medicine without his knowledge.

Later, she denied saying so but ended up charged with murder.

The sight of 80-year- old Mavis crying outside the court after she was cleared of all charges was utterly heart-rending.

are we really the kind of society that puts, to coin a phrase, little ELEVEN judges judging, ten lords a-leaping, nine dozen lawyers lawyering. Three enormous court cases, all to discover if Boris Johnson and his government acted legally when proroguing Parliament. The verdict will not be delivered until next week, but let me raise one point: who is paying for this? What mug is picking up this massive legal bill? Need I ask? old white-haired ladies in the dock and through the trauma of an 18-month trial for doing what she thought was humane? It seems so brutal and pitiless. what on earth were people in the Crown Prosecution service thinking?

Perhaps it is no surprise that the couple’s children are calling for an assisted dying law to be introduced in the UK that would protect family members like their mother who help loved ones to die.

They won’t be the first to do so — and they won’t be the last.

we have been here before with pressure groups, impassioned individuals and distraught family members on the courthouse steps, pleading with legislators to do something about the laws surrounding euthanasia, mercy killing, assisted suicide or assisted death, call it what you will.

and in every instance, even when challenged through the courts, they have refused to budge or give clarity on the matter.

I think they are absolutely right to do so.

It’s not just that any law which permitted mercy killing would be unworkable. The legislation itself would be impossible.

Those passing judgment would have to be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the person who had organised or performed the killing was motivated by compassion and nothing else.

But how could they possibly decide that? The state would have to rummage inside the accused’s mind and dabble in their soul — is that really what we want?

In addition, I don’t want to live in a world where the terminally ill are seen as easily expendable, or worry that they are expected to die when they don’t feel ready to do so.

as to motivation, there is hardly an elderly person in the entire country whose death would not benefit someone or some organisation — up to and including the state itself, with one less pension to pay out and one less hospital bed to fund.

we all want an easy death, free of protracted pain and disability, free of being a burden to others.

Yet the terrible truth — and we have to face it — is that this is not going to happen to all of us.

advances in medical science can prolong life but not the quality of that life, which is the ethical quandary at the heart of all these tragic cases.

CALLS for new assisted dying laws always come after the saddest of circumstances, from people who have been through the terrible pain of bereavement.

while I sympathise hugely with the Eccleston family’s predicament, I simply can’t agree that the law as it stands could or should be meddled with.

It seems incredibly harsh that Mavis’s case ever came to court in the first place, or that it should be thought she was motivated by anything but the deepest love.

Her family will perhaps take scant comfort from her innocent verdict. However, no one in this country has ever been convicted under similar circumstances and I doubt anyone ever will be.

Perhaps the focus should be on providing more hospices and more pain relief for the terminally ill — and support for those who have to witness their suffering.

Unless that happens, we are all going to suffer.