'For the love of my mother'

MARTIN VAN BEYNEN

When Sean Davison and his mother Pat clapped eyes on each other at Dunedin Airport they both burst into tears.

They had always been close and now Davison, a tall, lean worried-looking man, was back from Cape Town in South Africa, where he lectured in biotechnology at Western Cape University, to be with her as she succumbed to cancer.

She had refused chemotherapy and any support services, adamant she would die in her rustic cottage in Broad Bay, a beautiful spot on Otago Peninsula.

Davison had come home "to make her last days happy".

He was surprised to see his mother at the airport as he expected her declining health would have prevented her making the long drive. On the way home, they went shopping and Pat helped him fill a supermarket trolley.

It was August 11, 2006, and although Pat was frail, the cancer in her lungs, liver and brain were not causing her pain.

She was already reducing her food intake and was not expecting to make her 85th birthday on September 11. She discouraged her son from making any plans. A medical practitioner with an honours degree in physics from London University, the strong-minded Pat had made her wish to avoid a long and lingering death abundantly clear during the past 20 years.

"I guess Mum could die any day now. This is what she wants and I will accept that," Davison wrote in the diary he started almost immediately.

During the next fortnight, mother and son settled into a routine and Davison and other visitors started to see an improvement in Pat.

She was eating more, enjoying visitors, doing crosswords and puzzles, reading and listening to the radio.

He took her for drives, taught her about Google Earth and sorted out her library disputes.

Back in Cape Town, Davison's Chinese partner Raine Pan – they now have two sons – was looking after Davison's two dogs Cleo and Caesar. Davison was facing a dilemma. He had taken time off work to be with a dying mother who now looked as though she was improving.

Should he go back or stay?

His decision was made for him as Pat's health deteriorated rapidly. By the middle of September, she constantly talked about taking her own life. She hated being a burden. She told Davison her life was now unpleasant, she felt uncomfortable all the time and any sort of food was unpalatable.

For a break, Davison regularly went swimming in town.

"I am bombarded by little shocks each day as I watch Mum dying before my eyes. I pound up and down the length of the pool to temporarily free my mind of the pain of them," he wrote.

By September 23, Pat had decided to go on a water-only diet and soon she was needing help with things like going to the toilet. Davison made a joke of it, pretending their trips to the toilet were a waltz or tango. Within a short time the jokes were over as he lifted his skin-and-bones mother on to a commode in her bedroom, taking great care to protect her dignity.

Nurses who visited the home were struck by how caring and gentle Davison was with his mother.

One nurse would later say: "They had a very strong bond. It was a very strong mother-son relationship. They loved each other, that was very clear ... he was a very lovely man."

Pat continued what she called her "Bobby Sands" and wrote a living will which asked her children not to intervene. Davison and his sister Jo, who lives in Hokitika where their father was the superintendent of Seaview Hospital for nearly two decades, agreed it was their mother's decision and her "course of action seemed reasonable".

By the end of September, watching his mother die was making Davison sink into a "horrible depression" and he felt he had to unburden himself to his mother.

"I tried to control my tears. She reached out and held me to comfort me as if I was still her blue-eyed boy, telling me it was all right," he wrote.

After a fortnight of taking no more than a few cups of water a day, Pat still woke each morning.

Davison felt ready for his mother's death.

"I realise that if it isn't soon she may end up with the undignified and ghastly death she so fears," he wrote.

On October 7, Davison took one of his mother's morphine tablets from the stash he had been accumulating by collecting her prescription every week.

"But oh boy, it was good! Mum is in for a treat."

It was the beginning of a short-lived morphine addiction.

Each morning he crept into her room after opening the curtain in the living room to reveal the view of the bay.

"Each day as I turn around, I tell myself that Mum is dead, to prepare myself."

As Pat's condition worsened her bedsores started to cause more pain and he began regularly moving her legs and her hips.

The long, lingering death she had hoped to escape was coming to pass. Davison's sleep was constantly interrupted and he was getting more and more exhausted.

By October 9, Pat could no longer hold a glass to her lips and Davison noted, "it means she may not be able to overdose on her own".

A week later, his brother Fergus, also a biotechnologist, arrived from London to say his goodbyes and was appalled at what his mother was doing. He told Davison she could be having an enjoyable and worthwhile end instead of the horror she was inflicting on herself.

Pat's condition deteriorated again and with her whole body hurting, Davison started her on morphine which made her confused and reduced her to a querulous, childlike state.

"She is consumed by pain as her body decays. The days are long, the nights even longer. She is longing to die ... I am so exhausted, the grief is killing me."

After Pat had been on the water-only regime for 31 days, Davison wrote his mother was falling to bits. Her tongue seemed to be completely decayed and her bedsores made him wince.

"The only rational thing to do is take her to a hospice or hospital.

"This is ghastly ... too unbelievable. What kind of sane person would keep their mother in a bedroom to rot to death?"

But Davison considered he would spend a lifetime feeling guilty if he went against his mother's wishes. He felt he was losing his identity as "my every moment is her life".

He asked her emphatically if she wanted him to make her death wish come true.

She replied, "Please, I want you to help me die ... you really are a good boy."

On October 24 2006, the 33rd day on water only, Pat, despite a morphine drip, was in agony and implored her son to "bash me on the head".

"I want to die tonight. I feel dreadful. I feel pain everywhere and I can hardly talk," she told him.

"I felt the time had finally come," he wrote.

His emails and written accounts recounting that time vary in describing how he then helped his mother die.

His official account in his raw and powerful book Before We Say Goodbye, published by Cape Catley in 2009, describes how he got her a glass of water and said, "Has the time come for our last waltz? ... There was no doubt she was happy".

In other versions, Pat tossed back a morphine drink easily. In another he held the drink to her face and said, "Do you want to die tonight?" In yet another, he held the glass to her lips and gently poured it down her throat.

One account says Pat gave him a gentle smile and sang, A Fond Kiss.

Night nurse Sonya Birch arrived about 10.30pm to find Davison lying with his mother on top of the bed. She sent him to bed and talked briefly with Pat, who asked for neither her nor her son to be in the room with her when she died.

The nurse put a sprig of jasmine near her face and positioned her so she could see an enormous moon over the bay. By 2am Pat was dead.

Davison rang his brother Fergus and said he had given his mother "too many pills".

He emailed a friend: "The pain of losing my mother is one thing but to have killed her as well is quite a double whammy to deal with. What I did I did for the love of my mother."

Davison went back to South Africa and in 2009, after he had produced at least nine drafts or manuscripts, his account of his mother's end hit the shelves.

Publicity about the book in New Zealand prompted unknown people to come forward with the parts of the book the publishers had omitted – and by September last year Davison was facing a charge of attempted murder.

The charge was based on an unpublished section of the book in which Davison recounted how he had prepared a morphine drink for his mother and told her, "If you drink this you will die."

"You are a wonderful son," she had replied.

Davison's trial in the High Court at Dunedin ended on Wednesday this week with Davison pleading guilty to a charge of procuring and inciting attempted suicide. The Crown withdrew a charge of attempted murder.

The saga had left him "terribly sad" that his act of love and kindness had ended in a criminal conviction, he said afterwards.

In correspondence with his publisher produced during the trial, Davison had been more gung-ho about the consequences of his honesty.

"I am prepared to take the full consequences of my actions," he wrote as the publisher tried to convince him to drop parts of the account.

"I have thought a court case on a case such as this would make such a mockery of the law. It could be the case that sets a precedent and changes the law.

"The sad reality is more good will come from this book if there is a court case although we don't want that. Sometimes one has to suffer a little for what one believes in."

With his suffering reaching a conclusion of sorts – he will be sentenced on November 24 – the question of whether some good will come lies in different hands.

The material in this article is derived from Davison's book, Before We Say Goodbye, and evidence presented in court.

- © Fairfax NZ News