My father-in-law begged us to kill him – I’m haunted by his pleas

It’s hard to imagine ever being in so much pain that you would beg your family to end your life.

But in late 2023, that was very much the reality for my father-in-law Sean*.

‘Please. Kill me now!’ He said to his son one morning.

Of course, there was nothing he or any of us could legally do.

These ended up being the last words Sean ever said to him. And his painful, agonising pleas in those final few days have haunted us ever since.

As a family, we would have done anything to spare Sean the unnecessary suffering that he experienced in his final days. But currently UK law prohibits this.

That’s why I welcome the news that proposed legislation will allow terminally ill adults (those expected to die within six months) to seek help to end their life – so long as two doctors and a High Court judge agrees they are eligible and have made their decision voluntarily.

It could prevent other families from facing the heartbreak we have had to endure.

My father-in-law had always been younger than his years. Not only was he physically fit and healthy – going to the gym and swimming regularly well into his late eighties – but mentally he’d always had a natural interest in the world.

It’s why he and my mother-in-law had travelled all over the world and still made their biannual trips to visit family in the States. 

To be honest, I don’t think he would have ever slowed down had the urinary tract infections (UTIs) not made him. 

Unbeknownst to us as a family, from January 2023 he was battling recurrent UTIs.

In private he was taking course after course of antibiotics in an attempt to get the infections under control, but then he started to struggle with urine retention. At that point he had to have a catheter put in, which was changed weekly by a district nurse.

Having a catheter placed isn’t the most pleasant of experiences at the best of times, but for Sean it was becoming increasingly painful each week.

Given his age, all these symptoms should have raised red flags, yet at no point did his GPs do any tests – I still don’t understand why.

By that November I began to be concerned.

He’d lost a lot of weight, was starting to look poorly and the oral morphine (which had been prescribed for the pain) left him drowsy and led to frequent falls. Between this and the fact that the catheters were beginning to leak, I knew we were dealing with something else.

That’s when he turned to me and said: ‘I can’t go on like this.’ He wanted his suffering to end

I phoned an ambulance and, after bouncing between a couple of hospitals, he was given an MRI scan, which revealed a massive tumour on his bladder.

Sean had bladder cancer and it was terminal.

‘He has weeks, months at most.’ We were told.

There were no treatment options for him, all they could do was ‘make him comfortable’. Unfortunately, in the weeks that followed he was anything but.

By mid-December he could no longer eat the meals his wife cooked for him – subsequently experiencing severe weight loss as a result – and the pain, particularly in the genital area, was growing even more intense.

Come Christmas, it’s fair to say he was miserable. He struggled to stand unassisted and could only consume meal replacement shakes.

That’s when he turned to me and said: ‘I can’t go on like this.’ He wanted his suffering to end.

Up until then he’d been happy to pretend this wasn’t happening for my mother-in-law’s sake. She couldn’t accept that he was dying, and so they hadn’t discussed anything about the end, but now I could.

Sitting with the Marie Curie information booklet I asked if he had read to the end. He told me he had and he knew what was coming.

And yet, he still had to endure another few weeks of unimaginable pain.

Had he known then what was still to come and had it been a legal and viable option for us as a family, I feel confident in saying that Sean would have considered and even agreed to it.

The cancer continued to spread – bladder cancer tends to spread to the lymph nodes in the pelvis and tummy, lungs, liver and eventually the bones – which only made his pain more intense. And though we gradually increased his doses of oxycodone (a pain management drug) as much as we could, it did little to help.

If anything, it made things worse as he suffered severe side effects, including constant drowsiness and distressing nighttime hallucinations.

Soon, we were no longer able to help him at home and the decision was made for him to enter hospice.

And it was while waiting for the ambulance from his home to the hospice that he turned to my brother-in-law and uttered those heartbreaking words.

No one should ever have to be in that much pain. It’s cruel.

I naively thought that being in the hospice would bring him immediate pain relief and comfort, however, it didn’t.

Despite the pain being at its worst – mainly in his neck and genitals – we had to fight every day to get the levels increased to make him comfortable. Even the Marie Curie nurses were heartbroken that they couldn’t get his pain under control.

He was in so much agony that Sean’s last words to me were: ‘Please. It’s not working.’

We did eventually get the meds up enough, but all this had been exhausting.

After a final, harrowing few days, on January 24, 2024, Sean died peacefully in his sleep with his daughter by his side. And while we were all obviously devastated, there was also a sense of relief to know his pain was finally over.

But this period of suffering didn’t have to happen.

If there had been an option for him to end his life on his terms, we could have been left with good memories before the cancer took hold. Instead, I’m haunted by his pleas for death.

While the proposed legislation probably wouldn’t have saved us from this fate sadly – I imagine getting two doctors to sign off would have been doable, but a high court judge would have taken a lot of time (especially given the Christmas and New Year breaks) – but I still think it is absolutely a vital step in the right direction. 

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. 

Trevor Moore, chair of My Death, My Decision, said: ‘The Bill before Parliament offers a crucial step towards giving choice to people like Sean and respecting their wish to end their suffering, here where they live, not forced abroad. I urge MPs to act with compassion by listening to these voices and supporting this Bill on 29th November.’

I also think it’ll help people with MND or other terminal illnesses where they know it’s not going to get better, it’ll probably make things a bit easier. But also, it’ll help the families.

Assisted dying options are urgently needed, otherwise many more people and families will have to suffer like we did. And that’s a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

*This name has been changed

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