A friend emailed me to say that a friend of his just rung him to say goodbye as he will shuffle off this mortal coil in about forty-five minutes' time. He's just eighty-one years of age, a few months younger than my friend and, yes, you guessed correctly, he had signed up for VAD.
In case you aren't familiar with this initialism, it's got nothing to do with tax but stands for "voluntary assisted dying". He was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and he couldn't tolerate the chemo, so they stopped, and he's determined that today will be his final day. I don't know him; you don't know him; only my friend knows him, and yet it's hard to get the mind around it, isn't it? "No man is an island, entire of itself ... Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
Maybe it's time to watch "Last Cab to Darwin" again.
