An act of love and redemption

Right-to-die campaigner Marie Fleming wanted her story to be published, and needed someone to finish it. Here Sue Leonard tells how she wrote the remarkable book.

I FIRST met Marie Fleming at the start of March 2013. She had taken her High Court and Supreme Court challenges against the State, fighting for the right to be helped to die with dignity, but judgement was not yet delivered.

I’d seen her on the TV news, and read her brave testimony in the papers, and I admired her enormously.

I’d read her childhood memoir too, and some other pieces written before her hands prevented her from typing. Hers was an extraordinary story.

At 14, when her mother abandoned her family, Marie left school to keep the family intact. Later, pregnant at 16, she spent time in a mother and baby home in Belfast. She fought hard and kept her baby. Two marriages failed; but her career was so successful, she worked at the University of Wales and then UCD with lecturer status. She was unstoppable.

I’d already met Tom Curran, her partner of 18 years. He wanted Marie’s work to be published, and needed someone to finish it, and bring it all together. Tom and Marie lived near Woodenbridge, in a magical cottage down a windy road, miles from anywhere. Tom showed me into a light-filled room, and there was Marie, sitting propped in her wheelchair.

I had been nervous of meeting her, but her aura enveloped me. Her personality simply filled the room.

I approached her, kissed her, and gently stroked her cheek, and the silky skin on her arm. It felt natural.

It was an inspirational afternoon. She talked proudly of her children, Corrinna and Simon, and of the seven grandchildren she so adored. We talked about the book, about her illness, and of her wish to be helped to die before her MS became unbearable.

I asked her was she afraid of death, and she said, no, not at all. She’d almost died three years earlier, and had a near-death experience. She had seen her late father waiting for her, her dead spaniel, Ben, by his side.

Tom then told his side of the story; how, that night he had kept Marie alive; using CPR twice. Marie looked at him in astonishment.

“I didn’t know,” she said. Tom and Marie’s love shone out. They looked at each other with tenderness, as he gave her sips of water each time her throat dried. But there was feistiness there too. They laughed as they recounted their fights; and how Marie, once started on a row, found it so very hard to let go. I left that day feeling overwhelmed with love, admiration and profound sadness.

Soon afterwards, Marie got an infection, and she was dogged by illness all that spring, and through the summer too. She was at home when her Supreme Court challenge was rejected. I visited her a few times, but often, proposed visits were cancelled because she lacked strength and her voice faded.

During that time I met up with Tom, with Simon, and with Corrinna, a mother of five, who gave up a glittering career to care for her family. She has been a rock for her mother during the many highs and lows of life, and the mother-daughter bond is the strongest I’ve ever encountered.

In August, I spent a week working on the book at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig. I was on an evening walk when Corrinna rang. She talked of her brother, Simon’s wedding. Marie had attended; this had been her reason for living.

“What will she live for now?” I asked.

Corrinna laughed. “No pressure Sue,” she said. “The book. She’s living to see it published.” I ran back to the house, sprinted up the stairs, and sat writing until the small hours.

I last saw Marie at the end of October. I had never seen her look so well. She had gained weight and there was colour in her cheeks. She was in wonderful form, too, and was excited about her book.

We talked about the cover, and she indicated a painting she felt might work. It showed a nude woman, sitting in a chair, bent over, head hanging, the picture of dejection. Tom explained that the painting had been on the wall of the house Corrinna and her husband Richard had rented in London. Marie had stayed there when her second marriage ended.

“I used to sit and stare at that painting,” said Marie. “It was exactly the way I felt. I felt betrayed.”

Who should we get to endorse the book? Tom favoured a Right to Die exponent, but from Marie’s grimace, I took it she didn’t agree. She waited until Tom had left the room to say,

“Those guys don’t know me from Adam. I want a real writer.”

I nodded. “You want Anne Enright, don’t you?”

“I do,” she said.

This wasn’t some mad aspiration. Years earlier, when Marie was still mobile, she had attended a weekend writing workshop in Kerry, and Anne was the teacher. The two had liked each other, and Anne has been impressed with the spirit of Marie’s writing. She had urged her to seek publication.

It was such a lovely afternoon, full of laughter. Before I left I told Marie a secret. My youngest daughter had just told us she was pregnant, with a baby due in June. We weren’t to tell a soul, but I knew my daughter wouldn’t mind me making this exception. And Marie’s face was bathed in smiles as she congratulated me. She knows the excitement each new baby brings.

Soon after that, Marie fell ill again. She was never to recover. We were working on the subedits, and fearing for Marie’s life; our wonderful editor, Ciara Considine, was rushing a sample book to print.

On December 19, I was driving to Galway in icy conditions when Corrinna rang.

“We need to get that quote from Anne Enright,” she said, and I realised Marie’s end was near. I promised to do my best, but meanwhile, Ciara contacted Anne through her uncle, the writer Dermot Bolger. Anne was more than happy to supply some words. She composed them that afternoon, and Tom read the quote to Marie that night.

I was awake the following morning, at six am, when Tom’s text message came in. ‘Marie passed at 5.30,’ it read. It was a difficult morning, interviewing in a rainy, dismal Salthill, when my mind was on Marie’s family.

I was breaking my journey home, when Ciara rang to say, “I’m holding the book in my hands. It looks amazing.” This was just nine hours after Marie’s death.

We met, that night, at the Woodenbridge Hotel, and drove to the cottage together. We handed the book over. Close to tears, Tom said, “All I want to do is to put it in Marie’s hands.”

He did the next best thing when he placed the book in her coffin, next to her heart. At the funeral, on Sunday, December 21, a letter, written by Marie before she died, was read out by her daughter, Corrinna.

It looked back on her turbulent life, and thanked all those who had helped her through it.

Beautifully composed, the letter appears in Marie’s book. It makes the perfect ending.

An Act of Love by Marie Fleming with Sue Leonard, is published by Hachette Books Ireland.