End of life is not for wimps. When Ma was very weak and the nurse came to insert her catheter, I sat listening from my bedroom next door. My mother still wanted dignity and privacy when she could get it. It was only afterwards that I realised the nurse had inserted it without offering anaesthetic cream or any local pain relief, but my mother was too tired to protest. I was furious. Unnecessary pain was the thing I’d promised I would protect her from. Unnecessary suffering. It was a promise that I could not keep.

Rachael Stirling reflects on her mother’s final months – and listens back to the recordings the actor made then, racked with pain, as a passionate advocate of assisted dying.

Read the full story here … ‘It’s gone on too long. Push me over the edge’: Diana Rigg’s dying wishes in the grip of cancer. The Guardian, 10 December 2023.