Uncompromising, funny and full of love
JOHN McCarthy was not afraid of dying. He had come to terms with his fate, and although he was devastated by it, he didn’t shy away from it.
“Shit happens, kid. You gotta get on with it,” was his usual line if you got overly sympathetic. But, like everything else in his life, the mental health campaigner and human rights activist wanted to die on his own terms. What he was most afraid of was becoming a burden on his family while he was trapped in a body that was no longer serving him.
For this reason, he had taken on another taboo in Irish life. Like the arena of mental health in which he so doggedly fought, he had, in the latter months of his life, begun to advocate on the issue of the right to die for the terminally ill.
He spoke at a conference in UCC in support of assisted suicide late last year, but was clear that he did not want to come across as a victim, and had earlier in the year turned down an appearance on The Late Late Show when it was looking for contributors to a feature on assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian.
“I don’t want to be wheeled out as a helpless victim in all of this,” John said at the time. “But I do think the issue needs to be debated in this country as people are being left in awful situations.”
Just before his death, the Irish Examiner had been preparing to publish an in-depth article with John about assisted suicide.
In an interview just before Christmas, John said all he wanted was to be given a choice about how his life would end, and getting help should he need it. He did not want to go down the route of assisted suicide, but he firmly believed it should have been a legal option for him and others like him.
Just as in the realm of mental health, he believed people should have control over their decisions — this being the most important one anyone could make — and not be deterred by others’ laws or morals.
Late last week, John approved the intimate words of his final interview, and although anxious that it go ahead, he said he wanted to wait a “few more weeks”.
A few days later, he passed away at home with his family. It was a blessing that he did not have to take the hard decisions in the end, and got his wish — to die from hard work fighting for change in Ireland’s mental health laws.
Knowing John, he would still want his views aired now, and the following quotes are extracts from his final interview.
“If assisted suicide was a legal option, I could relax and enjoy my life and concentrate on living. Instead, the dilemma hangs over me like a black cloud.
“This could be an awful lot more dignified if I could get the proper advice on what to do. People tell me trawl the web. I have trawled the web and everything has a doubt in it. I have asked advice and there are doubts: How many tablets would you take, you might wake up, you might not.
“Do they think it’s going to spread like an epidemic or something? I had someone on to me the other day who has motor neurone [disease] and is deteriorating and he has the same problem. He can’t implicate family, he can’t get any help and doesn’t want to die in Switzerland.
“I don’t want to die in Switzerland, I was born in Cork, I live in Cork and I love Cork — I want to die in Cork. I do not want to get on a plane and come back in a coffin. How could I ask my family to do that? If assisted suicide were a legal option, I could relax and enjoy my life and concentrate on living.”
John knew speaking out about this issue would be controversial, but it was not in his nature to shy away from controversy.
“This is another area where you are supposed to keep your mouth shut and get on with it. Should I be keeping my mouth shut about this? Yes I probably should.
“But it’s another area around the right to choose... where people are making decisions about capacity for you and, again, they simply don’t have the right.
“When a subject is a taboo in society, that is dangerous. People just want information. Taking away the right of a person to choose is a very cruel thing and I am going through a fair bit of cruelty at the moment, because I am spending time thinking about it all when I should be concentrating on using my mind to write and living my very limited life to the full.”
John also paid tribute to his “beautiful family”.
“They are looking after me now in every way with great dignity and love and without complaint. My family are beautiful people and I am well loved by them. But this is about my right to say ‘enough’. Why would I want to continue to live like that?”
In his “review of 2011”, one of his final columns for the Cork Independent, published just before Christmas, John wrote: “The love I am receiving from so many is driving me on; I can no longer drive. Love is walking beside me; I cannot walk. My family growing in strength, as I grow weaker.
“Flocks of friends hover; rhyme, wine, song, laughter, not a whine. Love conquers all. That is a simple fact. Life is a beautiful thing, with all its flaws, pain, emotional or physical; is a motivation when love calms the waves.
“This has been some year. I have loved it, I’m dying yet growing, go figure. I’m a tough old bird.
“Austerity is the new buzzword, the cold winds are blowing. Well, huddle up, find love, in this life it really is all that matters... My daughter Jill, her husband Tom, my son David, his wife Sarah, are building a cocoon around me.
“My grandsons, fine small men, hold me. So many reasons to be so proud of this year. Lizzy Mac, I love her so dear, she is always near. We had a date last week, the pictures, dinner, chocolates, wine and beer in the sitting room; magic is possible anywhere.
“2012, we will see? I will carry three words back to Lizzy Mac from here. They will simply be, I love her. Love conquers all.”
Right up to the end, John was uncompromising, belligerent, compassionate, a man of the people, anti-establishment, intelligent, principled, funny, talented and full of love for the most vulnerable.
He will be sadly missed by the city he loved, and far beyond.
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