I took Mum to Dignitas, but this act of love was investigated as a crime for two years

When Mandy Appleyard’s mum had a severe stroke, she told her daughter that she didn’t want to live anymore. But helping her with the arrangements to go to an end-of-life clinic in Switzerland, and being by her mum’s side in her final moments, sparked a living nightmare...

‘My mum’s simple wish was to die with dignity and in peace’ (Images courtesy of Mandy Appleyard)

Seeing my fit and active mum felled by a severe stroke was heartbreaking: a powerhouse of energy and joie de vivre reduced to a life of dependency which she loathed. Accompanying her to Switzerland when she chose an assisted death over a life of disability and confinement was sad beyond imagining.

To then be actively investigated for two years by the police for assisting a suicide was nothing short of a nightmare.

So when broadcaster and campaigner Esther Rantzen – who is terminally ill – pleaded with MPs to attend a Westminster debate on assisted dying earlier this week, she spoke for my mum, for me, and for all the people unlucky enough to have been sucked into the cruel anachronism that is this country’s law on assisted dying. (It is illegal in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.)