Sue Lawson was a proud woman. She was defiantly independent; she loved the house she had worked so hard to buy; she loved her job at Barclays bank where she had worked her way up to become manager. She was lively, she was optimistic, she was someone who knew what she wanted and was determined to get it.
At the age of 34 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Fourteen years later, when her condition had deteriorated to the point of near helplessness, she decided that she wanted to die. As fastidious in death as in life, she planned everything perfectly, leaving little - she thought - to chance.
She chose her favourite silk pyjamas to die in. She chose suffocation as her means of death and she chose the person with whom she wanted to spend her last moments - her youngest brother Graham. She didn't want police and she didn't want ambulances. The funeral was to be a week later, her will was sorted. She wanted to be in control of her death - in contrast to the miserable lack of control she had of her life. By the end she could not go to the toilet unaided. She couldn't walk, she couldn't eat without choking, she couldn't wash herself or look after the house. But she could choose to die. And die she did.
At around 5.30pm on Friday December 6 2003, at the age of 48, Sue Lawson took her last gulp of air. Finally she had got her way, but nothing - nothing - went as planned. It took 26 agonising hours for her to take her own life - she had begun her suicide attempt the previous afternoon. She hadn't taken into account her body's will to survive.
Contrary to her final wishes, there was an ambulance, there were police and - to crown it all - her brother Graham was arrested and held in police cells overnight on suspicion of aiding and abetting a suicide, a crime that carries a possible 14-year prison sentence.
Graham Lawson is a reserved, nervy sort of man, who does not happily draw attention to himself. But this week, the parliamentary committee that has been investigating possible changes to legislation - proposed in a private member's bill by Lord Joffe, making it legal for terminally ill people to seek assisted suicide in this country - put the issue on hold. Lawson is determined to do his bit to highlight the need for changes to the law, so that no one has to go through what he and his sister endured in those final 26 hours, and the legal ramifications that followed.
Nobody knows quite how many people "help" terminally ill relatives who have chosen to take their own lives. The law as it stands necessitates secrecy. There are newspaper stories from time to time about people who are desperately ill flying to Zurich for a legal assisted suicide, courtesy of the Swiss euthanasia charity Dignitas. Then there was Diane Pretty who, suffering from motor neurone disease, fought - and lost - her high court battle to have her husband help end her life.
After five months of uncertainty following his sister's death, Lawson, a builder and agricultural worker from Cowden in Kent, was finally told by the director of public prosecutions that he would not face charges. But not before he was stripped, searched, had his DNA taken and was put in the police cells like any other suspect. He feels angry that his sister had to suffer such a horrific death, that there was no easier, legal way out with the help of a doctor, and bitter that his role in her demise, which was little more than that of a humane, compassionate companion, could be seen as criminal.
"She should not have died like that. No one should - no human being," says Lawson, 35. "I feel honoured to have been asked by her to be there. But the fact that she could not go and just have an easier death makes me very angry."
Sue had talked about suicide in the abstract for months, years even. She had told her doctor, her physiotherapist, the community psychiatric nurse, the rest of the family. Everybody knew that once her life had deteriorated to a certain degree, she had no wish to live. She was forced to give up her job in 1999 - it involved driving and it was becoming impossible to get around. Reluctantly she became increasingly dependent on the carers who came to look after her. The house near Brighton became little more than a prison.
"People think it's really nice to have a carer, but if your life every day depends on someone getting you up and cooking your food, you see it differently. Everything she did, it was someone else doing it for her," says Graham.
In the last few months, Graham virtually moved in with her. "We had a good time together. There was nothing that I did not say that I wished I had. She knew me completely, as much as she could know me - good points and bad. I don't think I know anyone quite as well as her."
Then, suddenly, after years of talking about it, she decided the time had come. "It was three o'clock in the afternoon. I had been outside and cleaned my car. When I walked in she said, 'I've had enough. That's it. I want to do it.' She took some tablets and I carried her upstairs." There, he lay her on the bed, she put a plastic bin liner over her head and tried to suffocate herself. Graham waited, talking to her, holding her hand, lying next to her.
The tablets meant she was drifting in and out of consciousness, yet still her body's urge to survive was stronger than her will to die. Her hands went up, she removed the bag and, in tears, gasped for air. When she came round sufficiently, she tried again - and again, and again - pulling plastic over her face, desperate to die, only to resurface like a bobbing cork.
"I think I probably gave up thinking that she could do it," says Lawson. "Every time we had to start again, I was thinking, 'How can she be doing this?' I know it's a horrendous way of doing it, but it was what she wanted. She was scared if she took an overdose that she would survive and be in an even worse situation.
"If she had had a choice of an easier death, so she could have been given a tablet by a doctor or an injection, then she wouldn't have had to go like that. She had the choice to die, but not the way she did it. If she had not done it then, someone else would have had to have been involved."
After several exhausting attempts through the night, at 2pm the following afternoon Graham offered to help. "I said to her, 'Do you want me to hold your hands while you do it so you can't take the bag off?' She said, yes, so we had another go. When it got to the point where she wanted to take the bag off, I held her hand. But she said, 'No, Gray, you've got to let go.' I had to. She had to breathe.
"I thought I was a strong person but I wasn't strong enough. She had to find the strength herself. I kind of felt like I had let her down, by letting go of her hand. I knew she wanted to die: was she just saying that in desperation? I let go of her hand, she took the bag off. She howled. It was almost like her body was just dying and that was it. It had no more fight. I took her downstairs, she had a cigarette and calmed down. I took her back upstairs to bed again and we went through it all again."
It was her eighth attempt. This time she did not try to remove the bag. Her brother did not have to hold her hand down. She carried on breathing for another seven or eight minutes - every time he thought she was dead, she would take another great gulp of air.
"I lay with her and I was thinking, 'Right, do I save her? Do I take the bag off her head? What do I do? Will it stop? Is she still alive?' Eventually I took the bag off her head. I straightened all her hair out for her. I got her arms and hands and laid them out nice and flat. [The MS had twisted and knotted her limbs over the years.] I sat her up in bed and phoned the doctor."
Any potential case against Lawson hinged on the fact that he did not dial 999. That was never part of the arrangement. The locum who arrived decided it was "a suspicious death"; the coroner was informed; Sue's house, the "crime scene", was sealed off and a detective inspector was summoned. "At the time I still didn't think I was in any trouble, then the DI sat in the chair opposite me and said, 'I'm arresting you on suspicion of aiding and abetting suicide'."
Lawson was taken to the police station where his clothes were removed for forensic examination. The duty solicitor told him he was - at worst - facing 14 years in prison. He was given a tracksuit and foam slippers to wear and put in a cell - he didn't even have a chance to tell his parents that Sue had died. The police did that for him.
He was interviewed the following day at 3pm, then finally released - wearing the same tracksuit and slippers. He needed petrol and remembers worrying that someone at the petrol station would see him in these ridiculous slippers. His own clothes were not returned to him until five months later, after Lawson was finally told in a phone call from his solicitor on Good Friday that he would not face charges. Finally Sue's body could be released for burial and at last the family could have a funeral.
"I did a lot of my grieving while Sue was alive, just watching her suffering. To see her cry and cry because she was so unhappy, it was heartbreaking," says Lawson. His grief has passed; what he is left with is anger - anger that something he did that he believed was humane and compassionate was so misinterpreted, and angry that the rest of society is so oblivious and careless of the needs of people suffering like his sister.
"I have not lost my anger. I'm angry about it still. I'm angry about people not wanting to face up to things. They could end up in the same situation, but they don't want to address it. If I'd not been involved like this, I would be one of those people saying the law should be changed but doing nothing about it. It's made me come out and stand up for the right thing. It's made me strong enough to have the courage of my convictions."
