Duo-euthanasia: When your parents choose to die

Bas had planned a scenic route to the hospice, taking in Friesland’s meadows and canals.

“I still remember the whole trip,” he says. His mum was in the back seat and his dad sat beside him. At first, they talked. Els seemed resolute about their decision to opt for euthanasia.

“My mum was convinced, certain about doing it,” Bas says. “But my dad was a little bit emotional.”

Jan asked his son if they were doing the right thing. Bas was thrown – he thought it would be his mum who might have doubts.

“My mum had always really enjoyed life,” he says. “I remember she told me, ‘I’d love to be 80 or maybe even 90 years old.'”

But his father had been talking about euthanasia for more than a decade because of all the years of pain.

In the car, Bas reassured his dad. Once Jan calmed down, they drove without speaking, listened to music and watched the scenery go by.

Bas found a parking space.

“My dad said goodbye to my car – he liked my car, and he said, ‘Good job’, and ‘thank you’.

“And then we walked inside,” Bas says. “Imagine doing that – being in their shoes, taking that trip and that walk. It’s so unreal.”

For the next two hours, the couple’s family and friends came and went. They reminisced, and listened to music. At one point, it crossed Bas’ mind to call a halt to the proceedings.

“I had a feeling – ‘OK, let’s leave… Let’s step into the car and drive away,'” he says. “But I didn’t want to bring anything up that would make them feel uncertain – I had supported the whole [euthanasia] process.

“Better to keep everybody calm, and take the moment to say goodbye.”

Where to get help

– The Samaritans, external

– Befrienders Worldwide, external

– NHS Help for suicidal thoughts, external

– BBC Action Line

Just before 10:30am, doctors arrived to inject Jan and Els with the lethal medication that would kill them. The couple lay on hospital beds side by side. And in those final moments, before they lost consciousness, Bas witnessed his parents’ closeness.

“I’ve seen them maybe three or four times in all my life walking hand in hand,” he says. “But now they were laying there, hand in hand. And that gave me a really good feeling – they’re really doing this together.”

Bas describes that first half hour after his parents stopped breathing as “a factual thing” – they weren’t alive anymore.

“Then you realise what the situation is – that’s an unimaginable feeling.”

In the hospice, sorrow hit Bas. He began to experience a profound loneliness.

“Grieving is a very, very deep thing to go through,” he says, “and I don’t have brothers and sisters – I really felt alone.”

If we’ve been brought up by two parents, when the first dies, we can share our memories and sadness with the other as part of the process of bereavement. But Jan and Els were both gone.

“It was like my legs were cut off,” remembers Bas.

His grief was physical too – he felt sick for four or five weeks. His body hurt.

“I would not really recommend this to others, and that’s maybe a hard conclusion,” he says. “It was maybe for them [my parents] the best option, but having lost them both at the same moment was very, very impactful.”

Among people planning to apply for euthanasia in the Netherlands, especially those with dementia like Els, choosing the right moment to end your life may be complicated.

Source: Regional Euthanasia Review Committees (RTE)

As well as demonstrating they are suffering unbearably, they must be assessed by doctors as still having the capacity to decide for themselves they want to die. This can cause immense distress in dementia patients thinking about euthanasia, explains Dr Rozemarijn van Bruchem, a geriatrician and ethicist at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam.

“They think… I have that power right now, but now is too soon. But maybe next month is too late. So how do I decide at what point I need to start this process to see if I meet the criteria, to see if I can get euthanasia? And if I wait too long, might I have missed the window?”

Dr van Bruchem says it’s because euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands that her patients experience this anxiety. And they know permission for an assisted death in cases of advanced dementia is rare. In countries where euthanasia is prohibited, like the UK, people with dementia may face many challenges, but they rarely have to weigh these life-or-death options – as Els did.

In 2024, she told the BBC that she and her husband couldn’t wait because there was a chance her Alzheimer’s would progress. And Jan was committed to dying with Els. He told the BBC that perhaps he was going too soon, but he had lived his life – his life was completed.

Jan and Els were very aware of the burden their end-of-life decisions placed on their son. Bas attended all the meetings his parents had with their separate doctors during the euthanasia process. There were open family discussions. Often, we have regrets when a loved-one dies – especially about what may have been left unspoken. This didn’t happen to Bas. Two days before Jan and Els’ appointment at the hospice on Monday 3 June he wrote them a letter.

“It was about eight pages,” Bas says. “I went to the campervan late in the evening on Saturday night. I read the whole letter to them. It was about our lives, thanking them for what they’d done.”

Jan and Els were deeply moved. And just as they rarely displayed affection to each other in public, they hadn’t usually been demonstrative with their son either.

“You feel that they love you, but it’s shown by doing stuff, not really saying it, or giving you a hug,” says Bas. “My mum did [hug] more when she got dementia, but my dad never did – I never got a hug.”

That changed in the campervan on that last Saturday night. Jan hugged Bas.

“He did it after that letter. It was maybe one of the best moments.

“Everything was said.”