Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die

There’s something incredibly wrong, proposes author Sir Terry Pratchett, with a country where people who suffer from terrible afflictions, diseases and the like, are not allowed to die peacefully. Such is the subject of controversial new documentary “Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die”.

The author, now in his sixties, has had an unbelievably productive career: creating the popular “Discworld” series and commanding an army of millions of fans worldwide and, in 2007, Terry Pratchett publicly announced that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. In answer to the outpouring of support and sadness from his fans Sir Terry decided to take the issue head on in the BBC documentary “Terry Pratchett: Living with Alzeimer’s” and now confronts the idea of whether people who do suffer from conditions such as his should be able to choose to die.

Meeting with elderly couple The Smedleys, Pratchett begins his journey. The couple showing off their admittedly beautiful house, but also discussing the subject of husband Peter’s proposed death; the idea being that they travel to Zurich where a clinic exists to induce an assisted suicide. Peter, a sufferer of Motor Neurone Disease, chose his fate in a very matter of fact way and despite Pratchett’s support for the idea, the process visibly frightens him; ominously referring to the poison that the clients are given as “the killing draught”.

To find out more about the clinic Pratchett travels to Zurich and speaks to the company director of Dignitas, a business that provides the service, who shows him round the house where people come to die. Crammed into an industrial estate due to certain laws about the practices that go on in the little blue tin house, the place itself is oddly discomforting. The inside is dull and plain, vaguely reminiscent of a hospital and the garden is ugly and full of machinery noise from nearby factories, nothing tranquil or peaceful about it, despite the company director’s assurance.

Meeting a second sufferer, a much younger man in his 40s, Sir Terry is overcome. On the day that the young man dies Pratchett and his omnipresent dictation assistant listen to some of the his favourite music and the sadness is palpable, Pratchett’s emotion hidden behind his Gandalf-esque beard; and when it comes for the moment when Peter chooses to die the emotion evaporates. An eery business arrangement dressed up as care takes place as an old man dies, begging for water. The scene is not one of peace, the ugly little factory house with its fakery and quiet attendants looking on. There is something intensely shocking about this man dying and, although the program makes its case well for freedom of choice, the end result is not the romantic image in this strange little shed in Zurich. A day may come when people can make these choices for themselves in this country, but in a process so alien there must be more we can do to help these people, whether to die peacefully or otherwise.