‘Beloved Richard’s last 72 hours were inhumane’ Widow calls for Scotland to bring in assisted dying for terminally ill people
The wife of Perthshire man Richard Selley, who ended his life at a Swiss euthanasia clinic last month, said the experience had been “awful”.
Elaine Selley (57) travelled with her husband from their home in Glenalmond to the Dignatas clinic in Switzerland, where Richard ended his life at lunchtime on Friday, September 6.
Richard had been living with motor neurone disease for four years, and spent his final years campaigning for assisted dying to be introduced in Scotland.
Wife Elaine says she believes he made the right choice, but added having to travel abroad for it made the experience much harder.
She said: “I think you are numb and you are in shock and I think there are moments where I think it happened yesterday and there are moments when I think it has happened to somebody in a different life.
“I think that experience now is part of my experience in life and I have to process and deal with that, and it will be with me forever.”
She said saying goodbye to their children in the airport was on of the most difficult things to do.
Elaine continued: “It was having to say goodbye to people you loved at the airport surrounded by everybody on their way to Spain and Portugal on their holidays. “It was awful. “We were sitting reading these really comforting, beautiful emails we were being sent and there were a few tears shed when we were reading them, when we were sitting with everybody else in the departure lounge.
“We wish we weren’t there and we didn’t have to go through this.
“But for Richard and for his pain and his distress in that moment in time, which was far worse than it was at home, we knew he was doing the right thing for him.”
The couple spent £10,000 to allow Richard to travel out to Dignatas in Zurich, but Elaine says it would have been much easier if he had been able to die with dignity in Scotland.
She has also vowed to continue Richard’s campaign to have assisted dying laws in Scotland changed, and praised the staff at the Swiss clinic.
Elaine said: “Some people are quite happy to let nature take its course, but Richard wanted to take charge of his end of life experience, to ensure it was peaceful and he wasn’t in any pain.
“And I can’t see any opposing argument to that if there are safeguards in place.
“These are terminally ill people in the last phase of their life who have no chance of being cured, and there is nothing that can be done. Why shouldn’t they make a choice?”
Elaine added the final 72 hours were particularly difficult for Richard, describing the experience as “inhumane”.
She continued: “You could see Richard’s distress all the time.
“It was very sad that we had to spend that time in a real state of anxiety and upset, because we could not get him comfortable.
“We wanted to make it okay and we could not. That was by far the toughest part and it was 100 per cent avoidable if we could have stayed in Scotland. It was just inhumane how he spent his last 72 hours.”