OPINION: This is personal, so please bare with me.
The euthanasia bill is likely to be passed tonight because Winston Peters and David Seymour got together in a room and nutted out a compromise.
We will have the final say in a public referendum. Seymour didn't want it - but had to accept it.
Constructive, decent, and if that is what it takes to give Kiwis a choice at the end of our lives, then so be it.
- Doctors not allowed to suggest euthanasia
- Euthanasia: MPs agree to put End of Life Choice Bill to referendum
- 'Just do it': Terminal patient pleads politicians to pass euthanasia Bill
Now the personal bit. My patient, loyal Mum nursed my dad through his terminal cancer.
I helped, but nothing like what she did. I was too sad, too upset, too much in denial to be useful on a daily basis.
He died in a hospice after ringing the ambulance to take him on his last ride.
We didn't know it would be his last time at home. We were buggered, and so was he.
Four days later he died. He was uncomfortable, restless, in pain and bewildered, but he was proud.
I was still trying to hold his hand as I lay on his hospice bed at 4 in the morning. Little did I know he had slipped away a couple of hours earlier.
Here's the thing - I actually wouldn't have chosen euthanasia back then.
However, had he gone through weeks and weeks of that, we may have looked at it had it been on offer.
Choice is right. Well done David and Winston.
Duncan Garner is host of The AM Show
