I’d like to let my mother die, says John Hannah
SCOTS actor John Hannah has broken his silence on the agony of his aged mother’s struggle with dementia, lending his support for the controversial practice of assisted suicide.
The Four Weddings and Funeral star, best known for his reading of WH Auden’s poem Stop All The Clocks in the 1994 smash hit British film, admits he has been shaken by his 84-year-old mother Susan’s recent decline.
In an interview in the Radio Times, Hannah, 53, said: ‘My mum’s got no quality of life whatsoever.
‘If someone said you can let her go now, my sisters and I, we would say, yes do that. She can’t say it now, now the dementia has developed.’ Assisted suicide is currently illegal in the UK and those seeking to end their lives early have had to travel abroad to a Swiss clinic run by a company called Dignitas.
But Hannah said his role as a ghost in new supernatural comedy Marley’s Ghosts, on UKTV channel Gold, gave him the chance to reflect on the finiteness of life.
His father died last year and his mother is in a care home.
‘She really doesn’t want to be here,’ he told the magazine. ‘She’s been in a home for a good four years. And before that she was done with life.
‘Maybe there comes a time when you are done with that natural cycle. It’s been quite a traumatic couple of years. My dad died at the end of last year, we are selling the house, my mum’s in a home so I have been going back and forward with that.
‘It’s horrendous. My dad, we wanted him in a home and he resisted and resisted, and he fell down the stairs and that was it.’
Hannah said he believes the costs of caring for a growing population of elderly will eventually lead to a change in the law.
He added: ‘I am hoping by the time we get to that age there will be an assisted exit programme.
‘And do you know why it will come in this country? Money.
‘ Forget the church, forget the morality, it will be “there’s this older generation going gaga and we can’t afford it”.’
The self- confessed atheist added: ‘My mum’s got no quality of life whatsoever. I don’t know if she knows who we are when we go in.
‘It was lovely, I went up there [to Scotland], being with her just now and holding her hand.
He added that his family have agreed to a non-resuscitation policy for his mother, adding: ‘She was never a big eater. All she eats is a biscuit and a cup of tea. And they were talking about liquidising her biscuits and tea now, you think “F*** is that what it comes to?” She can’t even enjoy her biscuits and tea.’
Marley’s Ghosts is on Gold at 10pm on Wednesdays.