What We Are Becoming: Husband Wished to Help Wife Kill Herself

This is what we are becoming. Valerie Myer was disabled by Parkinson’s disease and wanted to commit suicide. That was apparently okay with her husband, who is furious he couldn’t assist her. I will let the story speak for itself:

Mr [Michael] Grosvenor Myer described his wife’s decision as “rational and courageous” and said that she had wanted him to be with her at the end. Valerie Grosvenor Myer was a novelist, literary critic, biographer, poet, playwright and teacher. She died at the age of 75 at the couple’s home in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire, on Aug 9 last year.

She took an overdose of paracetamol after three previous attempts to take her own life. “She was a distinguished woman but Parkinson’s disease had robbed her of the power of speaking articulately.

“Her beautiful italic handwriting was nothing but a bitter memory. She kept falling over and injuring herself. She knew when she had degenerated as much as she was prepared to put up with. When the day came I agreed to invent an unnecessary day’s work at the university library so that she could get on with it. I don’t regret it: it was what she wanted.

“My regret is only that because of the idiocy of the present law, my precious only heart’s darling had to die a horrible, lonely death all alone here in the house instead of having me here to help and comfort her, which was what she wanted,” said Mr Grosvenor Myer in a letter to a newspaper.

Mr Grosvenor Myer said that after a previous, unsuccessful suicide attempt his wife had gone into a coma and he had to call doctors. A consultant then threatened to section her to stop her committing suicide. Mr Grosvenor Myer said: “I told him outright that was the remark of a fool and a bully.”