TESTIMONY. "We were really together, just like he wanted": This son tells how he illegally helped his father die

The end of life is back in the National Assembly, the debates that had been stopped by the dissolution resume on Monday, May 12, but in a different form. Since the adoption in committee on May 2, the bill creates a "right to aid in dying," euthanasia or assisted suicide , for terminally ill patients at the end of their lives. Without waiting for these debates, some citizens go to die in Switzerland or Belgium. Other families in France organize to help a loved one in pain to die at their request, outside of any legal framework because euthanasia is punishable by law here. This is the case of Jacques, the son who helped his father to die.

Franceinfo met him at his home, but the city, district, or village where it took place will not be revealed. Nor will the region of France be revealed, because testifying is risky for this man who helped his father die. Sitting around a wooden table, Jacques wants to begin his story with the letter his father wrote to his children, the one in which he tells them about his project. It is called: "When I leave. Letter to my dear little ones" .

"I'll read it to you, " Jacques explains: "I've already spoken to you about it more or less. For some time now, I've been thinking about death. Advanced age, physical problems, not to mention the emotional suffering associated with a heavy feeling of depression and uselessness."

"That is why, even if it means showing a lack of vital ardor, I find myself desiring this death more and more often."

Excerpt from the letter written by Jacques's father

"'To avoid, when the time comes, life becoming painful, even unbearable for me, but also and above all, for you...'" , Jacques concludes, with a lot of emotion in his voice, reading this extract.

His 86-year-old father did not have an incurable disease, but one of the passing of time: "He had the old age disease, the one that makes things go wrong on different levels and he could walk less and less and stay awake. He loved life enormously. He loved talking to others, bringing them together, taking them to lots of places. And I think, on reflection, that's what he did for his death too. He managed to take some of them with him."

"He was very, very sensitive to the response everyone gave him when he first told us this," Jacques continues. "He thanked me for accepting that he wasn't alone in considering death, because in reality, it was being with him. In this letter, he also says that it was dying with family like in the good old days. He felt confident, he was able to do it, to say things like that, 'help me to die'."

His father sent him this letter "a year and a half before the event we accompanied him to, so that things could be prepared, mentally digested." A year and a half to take the time to say goodbye, to have some more good times and to prepare this clandestine assisted suicide. It was necessary to "approach support, associations." And then "choose the method," Jacques says, before specifying: "So the ingestion of a product that had to be brought in, with all the difficulties because it is obviously illegal, it does not sell easily and above all it is reprehensible."

The product chosen by his father is a barbiturate, a powerful anesthetic banned in France. "He especially wanted something effective and painless," Jacques explains. "We got the product on the dark web and paid in bitcoin. It's expensive, very expensive. It arrived in a completely banal form, as if it were something else entirely, something rather nice, something that passes customs... "

To avoid possible prosecution, they also had to come up with a plan to protect themselves. "On the lawyer's advice, my father sent us a letter telling us he was going to end his life and that he was offering to be there for us. We wrote back saying, 'No, we don't want Dad, we care too much about you, and you're alive.' And he wrote back again, saying, 'Fine, I'll do it anyway,' to really separate his intention from ours. And it was all purely artificial," he explains.

Months passed, then one day: "I went to see him one weekend, he said to me 'Here, next week, I'm going to send the letter that will say it's such and such a date'. On the day, my brother and I met at the station. We went to Dad's together and there, we entered a strangeness. Around 7:30 p.m., we sat down at the table, we savored every word enormously. We finished eating, then at one point, he said 'Come on, we have to go'. And he went to his room. We went with him, each lying down on one side of him, holding his arm. Then, he sat up suddenly and opened the little drawer."

"He drank a drink he liked before drinking the vial containing the lethal product. He lay down, and my brother and I lay down, each on one side."

"He was breathing quite quickly and we didn't say anything. I remember him putting his hand on my thigh. We were really together, just like he wanted. And then his breathing calmed down. It happened very, very quickly, in a minute I think, without any pain, without any jerks. We waited long enough to feel that he was becoming cold. There was a moment when my brother and I spoke. Is it okay? What do you think? We stayed for a long time," he continues with emotion.

"We made the product disappear as far away as possible, as we had been advised," Jacques said. "We cleaned everything up that evening like people who had something to hide. Then we left. We had left our phones at the hotel on the lawyer's advice, so as not to be geolocated. Then we followed our plan, which was to go to sleep, and then come back the next morning, and find out he was dead."

The doctor who came to certify the death concluded that it was a "natural" death: "What we did was we created a story. Obviously, there is fear, but there is joy, there are 1,000 emotions. I am proud to have done something that deserves to be heard because it can allow certain people to allow themselves to change their prohibitions."

"Dying happy is not bad."

If Jacques had the opportunity to be in the Assembly, he would read the letter sent by his father. "I think it speaks volumes," he assures. He would notably share the last excerpt from this letter: " If leaving in style is a vain hope, leaving with dignity seems to me a reasonable wish for those who have the right to self-determination. I feel that I have, as much as I could, assumed my responsibilities and fulfilled my destiny. Your old father and grandfather who loves you, loves you and loves you."

Today in France, a person who helps another commit suicide can be sentenced to up to five years in prison for failure to assist a person in danger and fined €75,000.