I’m sure I am not alone in hoping that when my time comes it is peacefully, in my sleep, at the end of a day full of fun and laughter with the ones I love. But I also know that is probably not going to happen.

It took me many years to come to terms with the emotional conflict between my despair at losing my mother and the relief that she was no longer enduring the pain of having her lungs destroyed by asbestos. I have no way of knowing if Mum would have wanted to control things. But I have often wondered if she, like so many people, should have had the choice in her final hours.

In the past 20 years more than