TOO HEARTBROKEN TO CARRY ON: The healthy 56-year-old mother, of sound mind and loved by family, who says she will take her life at a Swiss suicide clinic

The sky is a glorious blue. The cherry trees are in full bloom. It is the sort of day that makes you feel glad to be alive. Isn’t it, Wendy?

Wendy Duffy gives a little half smile. ‘I won’t change my mind,’ she says. ‘I know it’s hard for you, sweetheart. It will be hard for everyone. But I want to die, and that’s what I’m going to do. And I’ll have a smile on my face when I do, so please be happy for me. My life; my choice.’

By the time you read this, Wendy, a 56-year-old former care worker from the West Midlands, will have boarded a plane to Switzerland with a one-way ticket. She does not intend to return. Her journey to Pegasos, the controversial ‘suicide clinic’ in Basel, has been over a year in the planning.

‘I can’t wait,’ she says, admitting she started a digital countdown on her phone once she ‘got the green light’ late last year. She has paid £10,000, written letters to her loved ones, and picked out her deathbed outfit. The last thing she will hear is Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars singing Die With A Smile.

The Invisible Wound

What is wrong with Wendy? It is the question that haunts anyone hearing her story. She is not suffering from stage-four cancer, motor neurone disease, or any degenerative physical condition. Wendy is, by all clinical accounts, physically healthy.

The answer is infinitely more disturbing. Wendy is not dying from an illness; she is dying of a broken heart. Four years ago, she lost her only child, Marcus, 23, in a freak accident that would break any parent. Despite years of therapy and antidepressants, she remains convinced that life is no longer worth living.

She has already tried to take her own life once, an overdose that left her on a ventilator for two weeks. She applied to Pegasos because she wants to make a ‘neater’ job of it this time. ‘I could step off a motorway bridge,’ she says bluntly, ‘but that would leave anyone finding me dealing with that for the rest of their lives. I don’t want to put anyone through that.’

A Controversial Choice

Even in Switzerland, Wendy’s case is a grenade lobbed into the assisted dying debate. While assisting suicide is legal if not done for self-serving motives, psychiatric-only cases—where there is no physical illness—are highly contentious. Many clinics, such as the famous Dignitas, refuse such cases entirely.

Yet, a panel at Pegasos, including psychiatrists, has deemed Wendy’s suffering “severe, long-lasting, and treatment-resistant.” Within days of her arrival, and subject to a final in-person assessment to confirm her mental capacity, she will be helped to die.

‘They put the line in your arm, but you’ve got to turn the dial yourself,’ she explains. ‘Then—ding, ding, ding—within a minute, you are in a coma, and a minute after that, you are gone.’

She talks about it with the upbeat tone of someone planning a holiday to Barbados. She has even requested the windows be left open so her “spirit can be free.”

The Miracle Boy

To understand Wendy’s decision, one must understand Marcus. Born in 1998 after Wendy was told she might never conceive, he was her ‘miracle.’ A hip-hop loving young man, he was the center of her universe.

The tragedy of his death is almost too much to bear. Hungover after a night out, Marcus fell asleep on the sofa while eating a sandwich his mother had made him. A piece of cherry tomato lodged in his windpipe. Wendy, a trained carer, performed CPR, but it was too late. He was brain dead.

‘That’s when I died too, inside,’ she says. ‘I’m not the same person. I exist. I don’t live.’

The Ethical Slippery Slope

Wendy’s story highlights the “slippery slope” argument often used by opponents of assisted dying. If we allow the terminally ill to die, how long before we allow the grieving or the depressed to follow?

Pegasos founder Ruedi Habegger remains defiant. ‘The people who want to decide to take their lives should not have to do it in a horrible way,’ he says. But for Wendy’s six siblings back in the UK, the “neatness” of the procedure does little to dull the pain of losing a sister who still has decades of physical life ahead of her.

As she boarded her flight, Wendy remained resolute. She has cleared out her house and left her affairs in order. Her final wish is for her ashes to be scattered in a park, alongside those of her son.

‘You could give me a house full of dogs. I’m doing this,’ she told me during our final meeting. ‘My choice, sweetheart.’

For Wendy, the glorious blue sky and blooming cherry trees weren’t a reason to stay—they were merely a beautiful backdrop for a final goodbye.