The pair identified only by their first names, Francis, 89,
and Anne, 86 from Brussels fear loneliness if the other one
dies first so with the backing of their three children they are
planning to die in first ‘couple’ euthanasia.
Francis has received treatment for prostate cancer for 20
years and is unable to spend a day without morphine and
Anne is partially blind and almost totally deaf.
The children have even gone so far as to find a practitioner
willing to carry out the double killings on the grounds that
the couple’s mental anguish constituted the unbearable
suffering needed to legally justify euthanasia.
They decided that life in a care home was not an option
because of their fear they would end up bedridden without
the strength to insist on euthanasia. They are also afraid
that a good retirement home would cost more than their
combined pensions and that they would have to dig into
their savings to afford it.
They planned to commit suicide on February 3 next year,
their 64th wedding anniversary, by placing plastic bags over
their heads after taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
‘We want to go together because we both fear of the future,’
said Francis. ‘It’s as simple as this: we are afraid of what lies
ahead. ‘Fear of being alone and above all, fear of the
consequences of loneliness.’
He told Moustique, a Belgian online news service, that they
eventually opted for euthanasia because they were too
scared to attempt to commit suicide. ‘It takes courage to
jump from the 20th floor and I am unable even if I wanted
to do it,’ said Francis.
‘It takes courage to hang, it takes courage to jump into the
canal. But a doctor who makes you a shot and lets you
gently fall asleep? It does not take courage.’
Their son, John Paul, 55, approached their doctor to
request their euthanasia – which was legalised in Belgium
in 2002 – but the doctor refused because there were no
grounds for it.
John Paul found another doctor willing to perform the
killings in an unnamed hospital in Flanders, the Dutch-
speaking part of Belgium in which 82 per cent of euthanasia
cases are performed.
Francis said he and Anne were grateful for the
arrangement. ‘Without our son and our daughter, it would
never have succeeded,’ he said. ‘We are not sad, we are
happy,’ he continued. ‘When we were told we could leave
life together smoothly we were on a little cloud. It was as if
we had spent all that time in a tunnel and suddenly we
came into the light again.’
The couple’s daughter has remarked that her parents are
talking about their deaths as eagerly as if they were
planning a holiday.
John Paul said the double euthanasia of his parents was
the ‘best solution’.
‘If one of them should die, who would remain would be so
sad and totally dependent on us,’ he said. ‘It would be
impossible for us to come here every day, take care of our
father or our mother.’
The double euthanasia will not be first in Belgium, a
country where an average of five people a day die by lethal
injection.

I just wish I could decide when to terminate my existence when I've seen it all too. But one the other hand, the only reason I'll have to do that is if I'm sick, and as I no wan sick, I wish the couple a smooth ride to the great beyond. I no get dying strategy, the creator has the final say.

Eya..so touching