A daughter who farewelled her mother through euthanasia says the process was "beautiful, peaceful and just full of love".
Assisted dying is a choice many families have made since euthanasia became legal in November last year.
A referendum on the End of Life Choice Bill - which gives people with a terminal illness the option of requesting assisted dying - saw New Zealanders vote resoundingly in favour of legalising euthanasia in 2020.
Michele Christie farewelled her mother Athena earlier this year through assisted dying.
Christie told AM on Friday her mother was a extrovert and full of life.
"She was pretty amazing. She was an incredible extrovert, and we would have a house full of visitors on the daily basis. I think the record we had was 11 sets of visitors in one day," Christie told AM co-host Ryan Bridge.
"I was exhausted. I don't know how mum coped with it, but she got energy from people. She was just a pretty phenomenal person and we really got to learn a lot about her through the funeral service as she wrote her own eulogy."
Athena was diagnosed was stage four lung cancer in July/August in 2020 but couldn't have surgery because of the tumour.
Christie said Athena tried other treatments like radiotherapy, chemotherapy and was accepted into a drug trial, but whilst on the drug trial, they found out the treatment wasn't working in May last year.
"It was just after Mother's Day that the treatment was no longer working and the tumour had started to regrow," Christie said.
"Basically there was nothing more they could do from a treatment perspective for her. The worst-case scenario was three months, best case was 6 to 9 months."
Christie said her mother went out on her terms.
"It was absolutely a beautiful day. She got dressed in the morning, we had some champagne and toasted her and told her how much we loved her and she told us how much she loved us," she said.
"She went out on her terms and she said, 'I'm not changing the course of my life. I'm just taking a shortcut to avoid the pain.'"
Christie said the events that filled Athena's final day were "amazing" and filled with love.
"The day itself was amazing. It was so beautiful, peaceful and just felt full of love," she told AM.
"It's never easy saying goodbye to somebody that you love and death is not a beautiful thing, it just isn't, but in this instance, you get to create that moment, you get to decide where, when, how you pass away and how you leave this world."
Christie said that moment they created was very special.
"That's exactly what we did for mum and we supported her through that. So one of her friends had access to a rose nursery, so she'd come the day before and we had about seven or eight buckets of roses in the room," she said.
"She had candles and we had her favourite song - I would recommend to anybody pick more than one song because it does take a little while."
Watch the full interview with Michele Christie above.
