To Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and with a smile on his face, Briton follows his wife to die at Dignitas
A TERMINALLY-ILL man took his own life ‘with a smile on his face’ at a Swiss suicide clinic yesterday – just 18 months after his wife did the same.
Bob Cole, 68, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer in July and had been given just months to live.
But the retired guest house owner, who watched his beloved wife, Ann, 67, kill herself at the same Dignitas clinic in February last year, refused to let fate take its course.
Instead the former town councillor organised his own death and passed away after drinking a lethal cocktail of barbiturates at around 2.30pm yesterday.
A text sent to Mr Cole’s friends by Michael Murray, who accompanied him to Zurich, read: ‘Dear friends, Bob died with a smile on his face to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. He asked you all to seize the time.’
In the months following the death of his social worker wife – who was suffering f r om a brain disease which l eft her wheelchair bound and unable to feed herself – Mr Cole repeatedly called f or a change in the law on assisted dying in Britain. But while campaigning t he previously acti ve mountaineer and canoeist was diagnosed with mesothelioma and told by medics there was nothing they could do.
Hours before his death, Mr Cole, of Chester, told The Sun: ‘I should be able to die with dignity in my own country, in my own bed. The law needs to change. How do you change the law? People have got to take a stand. So that’s what I’m doing today.’
He added: ‘I’ve always grabbed life… I climbed mountains, I went fishing, I ran my own businesses, I ate good food and I worked hard. I don’t want to die painfully and slowly watching TV and eating chocolate ice cream. There is absolutely no quality of life in that.’
Mr Cole called on MPs to ‘have the guts’ to support a new Assisted Dying Bill, which would allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of painkillers to terminally ill patients with six months or less to live.
The proposed new law, put forward by Labour MP Rob Marris, is due to be debated by Parliament next month.
Last night Mr Cole’s brother, Chris, 73, told how he and his wife, Sue, 71, said goodbye to his younger brother, who paid £12,000 for the one-way trip, in an emotional telephone call from Switzerland at 11am yesterday.
He said: ‘It was so sad yet he was happy. He stayed with us on Tuesday night, but it wasn’t a nice last night together. He was in a lot of pain…we accepted his decision to die. It wouldn’t have made any difference (if we hadn’t) anyway. He had made his mind up.’
Mrs Cole said she could imagine her brother-in-law holding up his lethal drink in the clinic, ‘putting two fingers up to everybody and saying, “I did it my way”’.
Mr Cole, who was instrumental in pushing through a £4million regen-
‘People have got to take a stand’
eration project for Blaenau Ffestiniog, North Wales, recently wrote a humour-filled letter to his friends and relatives, urging them to enjoy the ‘good times’ when he had gone.
Many paid tribute to him and said it was fitting that someone involved in politics was using his death to continue pushing for change.
Friend Howard Bowcott said: ‘All his life he was politically active, it is fitting that even in death he was trying to campaign for a better world.’
Mr and Mrs Cole, who had no children, are among around 250 Britons estimated to have used lib- eral Swiss suicide laws since 2003. The law on assisted suicide was transformed in 2010 when thendirector of public prosecutions Keir Starmer introduced guidelines at the request of law lords. Broadly, these say anyone who assists a suicide out of compassion is unlikely to be prosecuted.
The new bill, which follows a law change proposed by Lord Falconer last year, is opposed by right-to-life campaigners, who say it will encourage some people to end their lives if they feel they are becoming a burden.