Blur drummer Dave Rowntree reveals his terminally ill ex-wife was forced to travel to Dignitas alone to end her life
31 October 2024, 11:27 | Updated: 31 October 2024, 11:36
Blur drummer Dave Rowntree has spoken for the first time describing how his terminally ill ex-wife flew to Switzerland alone earlier this year to end her life at Dignitas.
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Rowntree, 60, criticised the UK’s laws on assisted dying as ‘psychopathic’ as he joined calls for a law change to allow adults with months to live to be allowed help to take their own lives.
His ex-wife Paola Marra, who he married in the 1990s, flew alone to Zurich in March this year after she was diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer.
She decided that she did not want to suffer an uncertain fate and probably painful death, and so she decided to travel to Dignitas to end her life.
In a poignant film released after her death, Ms Marra, from East Finchley, in north London, said: “When you watch this, I will be dead. I'm choosing to seek assisted dying because I refuse to let a terminal illness dictate the terms of my existence.
“The pain and suffering can become unbearable. It's a slow erosion of dignity, the loss of independence, the stripping away of everything that makes life worth living.
“Assisted dying is not about giving up. In fact, it's about reclaiming control. It's not about death. It's about dignity.
“It’s about giving people the right to end their suffering on their own terms, with compassion and respect.
“So as you watch this, I am dead. But you watching this could help change the laws around assisted dying.”
Speaking to the Guardian, Rowntree said: “This is psychopathic where we are now, because the whole point of this is to try and make things easier for the real victim in this – the terminally ill person.
“'I certainly wouldn't support any bill that allows anyone to kill anyone else.
He said the current law made any terminally ill person who wanted control over their own deaths a “pariah”.
He added: “When the time comes, if they do decide to die with dignity, and end their life in a time of their choosing, and in a way of their choosing, they have to do it unsupported by anyone, on their own, not able to hold anyone's hand, not able to hug somebody and say goodbye.”
Terminally ill broadcaster Esther Rantzen has also argued for change in assisted dying laws.
