OPINION: This is personal, so please bare with me.<\/p>\n
The euthanasia bill is likely to be passed tonight because Winston Peters and David Seymour got together in a room and nutted out a compromise.<\/p>\n
We will have the final say in a public referendum. Seymour didn't want it - but had to accept it.<\/p>\n
Constructive, decent, and if that is what it takes to give Kiwis a choice at the end of our lives, then so be it.<\/p>\n
Now the personal bit. My patient, loyal Mum nursed my dad through his terminal cancer.<\/p>\n
I helped, but nothing like what she did. I was too sad, too upset, too much in denial to be useful on a daily basis.<\/p>\n
He died in a hospice after ringing the ambulance to take him on his last ride.<\/p>\n
We didn't know it would be his last time at home. We were buggered, and so was he.<\/p>\n
Four days later he died. He was uncomfortable, restless, in pain and bewildered, but he was proud.<\/p>\n
I was still trying to hold his hand as I lay on his hospice bed at 4 in the morning. Little did I know he had slipped away a couple of hours earlier.<\/p>\n
Here's the thing - I actually wouldn't have chosen euthanasia back then.<\/p>\n
However, had he gone through weeks and weeks of that, we may have looked at it had it been on offer.<\/p>\n
Choice is right. Well done David and Winston.<\/p>\n
Duncan Garner is host of The AM Show<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Read the rest here:<\/p>\n
Duncan Garner: Well done Winston Peters and David Seymour on euthanasia - Newshub<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OPINION: This is personal, so please bare with me. Continue reading