The Whole Switzerland Experience- Part One

I wrote this in 2025, after my mother died, as a way to get it out of my unending thinking. It’s been cleaned up a bit, with some pragmatic process-related details added for a friend who’s considering a similar trip at some point, and a friend who works as an “end-of-life doula”. For the most part, it’s the personal experience of me and my family. I’m posting it as a way to provide support to anyone who might find it useful.

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Mom has been dead for 11 days now. When I told my friend Kelly about my mother’s plan, she texted later that day that the idea seems so “surreal”. I’m so glad she handed me that label to put on the experience. It was the exact word for the last three months. 

My mom died in Switzerland, with my sister and I holding her hand. She went there to practice VAD- voluntary assisted death. 

For decades, my parents had a variety of exit plans if life became more than they wanted to deal with, whether old age, sickness, or just being done. My dad died 10 years ago in his sleep, while he was still active and very much enjoying life. My mom was 82 when he died, and 92 when she made the decision to leave this life. Shortly after her October birthday in 2024, she let my sister and me know that she planned to stop eating and drinking in January 2025.

Originally, her planned date was early February 2025 when she and my sister would be back from a trip to Florida. But they had to cancel the Florida trip due to my sister’s health, and with Donald Trump reelected, my mom decided to move the date up to early January. 

I spent much of December 2024 gathering information, finding resources on this process known as VSED (Voluntary Stop Eating and Drinking), and getting my mind wrapped around assisting my mom with this. I didn’t want her to do this, but I did want to support my mom in her wishes. It was a very weird Christmas, with everyone knowing my mom’s plan, coming up in less than three weeks.

A couple of days after Christmas, Mom and her friend Marilyn Sue had lunch. Back in my mom ‘s senior-living apartment, Marilyn Sue told my mom “I was a hospice nurse and you do not want to stop eating and drinking. it’s a terrible way to die. Why don’t you do what I’m going to do- go to Switzerland and have assisted death over there”. Mom thought that was a much better plan. We all did.

We started the process of getting Mom set up with an organization called Pegasos. She became a member which gave her access to the VAD application. She paid for 100 CHF (Swiss Francs) with a credit card, and we started on the now-available application.  We took about two weeks, gathering documents, attaching pdf’s of them to the online application, and submitting them for review. The review and approval process costs 5,000 CHF upfront. Another 5,000 CHF was due when the procedure date was scheduled but my mom had me wire the entire amount, to hurry the process.

My mom was ready. Everything hurt. In the space of five years, my mom went from being an avid indoor rock climber and doing “the hard exercise classes” to being in constant pain with everything hurting from her ankles, knees, and hips to her upper back pushing out sideways, curving her back in a way that was painful to look at, never mind endure. In those five years, she went from rock-climbing to walking with a Rollator to take the pressure off of her legs for some relief from the pain. She was so ready to go, and that fact gives me a great deal of peace.

In the United States, it is legal in many states to practice physician-assisted suicide (for lack of a better term), if you have a terminal diagnosis that projects death within six months. But for a person living in constant pain with no end in sight, there is no option in the United States to let them pass on peacefully. When people looked at me askance, I tell them if I had a dog that was in constant pain I would do them the mercy of having them put to sleep. I sure as heck wouldn’t make them stop eating and drinking until they died. So, I was willing to help my mom get this done in the most painless way possible.

To make the payment to Pegasos, I went to her bank to try to wire the Swiss francs out of our joint account.  My mom had added me on her account six months previously to make settling her future estate easier. I made the mistake of telling the bank what the transfer was actually for. Their corporate legal department made the decision that since VAD is illegal in the United States, they couldn’t be a part of wiring money to have it done overseas and they refused to send the wire. I cried on the way out the door, screamed in my car, called a friend, and then regrouped.

The following day, I went to my bank, told them it was for travel, wired the funds, and reimbursed my account from my mom ‘s. The time elapsed between her decision and us submitting the application and funds was about a month.

Then we waited. A month longer than we had to, evidently. When we hadn’t heard anything by mid-March, Mom told me to go get her 2 gallons of antifreeze so she could drink it and take herself out that way. I declined, telling her I was setting a boundary, that I wasn’t going to buy her antifreeze, and if she was going to do that, I didn’t want to know about it.

I did reach out to Pegasos, though, and asked for an update. They said they had sent Mom an email in mid-February approving the procedure, but hadn’t heard back. Mom and I looked all through her emails but didn’t see anything. Pegasos forwarded the February email- my guess is she had received the email, and accidentally deleted it. In any case, in that email to us in March, they confirmed she was approved. At my request, Pegasos copied me on all emails after that.

We settled on a date, April 16^th, and then things kicked high gear. In many ways I’m glad that we didn’t get that original email. Mom died in the middle of April. Selecting that date in mid-March made it a whirlwind to get everything organized, but it was better than knowing the date and having it drag out for two months.

There was a lot to get done in that remaining month. My husband Bob booked airfare and hotels for Mom, Cathy, and me. Pegasos told us which hotel to make reservations at, one that was sympathetic to the cause. The hotel was comfortable, and the staff was great the whole time we were there. I’m grateful Bob traveled for work and was so adept at making airplane and hotel reservations, even overseas.

We had to wire Pegasos an additional 1,200 CHF, so Mom could have a psych evaluation since she was bipolar- she was well-regulated and had been for 47 years, with no manic or depressive episodes since 1978. The evaluation was to be done on a video call. The payment meant another wire out through the bank. I also arranged to get 500 CHF in cash, for taxis and miscellaneous in Switzerland, and arranged with Delta Airlines for wheelchairs on each leg of the outbound trip. I also had to order a re-issued birth certificate for Mom (Switzerland requires a birth certificate reissued in the 6 months before the VAD), and collect some other documentation. That pretty much took care of the mechanics of getting set up with Pegasos and the travel.

Mom spent the biggest part of those remaining four weeks saying goodbye to everyone that she loved. I’d say everything that she loved, but she had no interest in driving past old homes she’d lived in or places that she enjoyed visiting like the art museum and the botanical gardens. It was really just people that she wanted to say goodbye to. At her request, Cathy and I took her out for one last lunch with her dear friend Vernie.

Mom and Vernie had known each other for over 40 years. They’d been going out to lunch annually after Vernie moved back to the St. Louis area, after living for a stretch near Jefferson City. Mom used to drive to Vernie’s to take her out to eat, and when that got to be too much for her, I drove them. When my sister Cathy retired, she tagged along. Cathy and I would sit in the front, and listen to Mom and Vernie in the back, talking and laughing like a couple of young schoolmates. For our last get-together, we went to Yellowstone Café in Town and Country. We spent almost two hours talking and laughing. Afterwards, we dropped off Vernie first, then I dropped off Mom and Cathy at Mom’s senior apartment complex, Bethesda Gardens. I headed home and found myself crying at the stoplight at Sappington and Big Bend. It was so hard to see my mom saying goodbye to the people that she loved.  I’m sure it was hard for her too, but she had the courage and integrity to do it. In her last week, she got together with her friends Rose and Marilyn Sue, playing music for last time on the grand piano in the living room at Bethesda Gardens for us and the other residents.

Bob and I hosted a family party for her at our house on April 4^th, with most of the family there. Our granddaughter Sienna drove down from Galesburg Illinois, with a beautiful card she made for her great-grandma. Mom loved it so much that she took with her to Switzerland. My daughter Jenni had been a sweet granddaughter to my mom- she took her grandma to meetings, to the art museum and to lunches. It’s so funny because when Jenni became pregnant with Sienna at the age of 18, my mom tried to talk Jenni into either an abortion or giving the baby up. Once Sienna was born, though, my parents were doting great-grandparents- they both loved her so much.

Our son Mike and his wife Melissa were there and Mike and my mom had a sweet set of hugs goodbye. I’m so grateful for Melissa. I have a feeling that she encouraged Mike to forgive my mom for just being how my mom could be sometimes. Jenni‘s boyfriend James wasn’t able to make the party, but Jenni and James and Jenni’s son Sebastian took my mom out to eat the week before the party. They went to First Watch, Mom‘s favorite. 

Brittney and Aubrey (Mom’s great- and great-great-granddaughters) came up from Herculaneum for the party, and they’re always a breath of fresh air.  Brittney gave my mom a ride home so she could pick up some earrings that my mom wanted to give her. They left about 7 pm, so the party was about three hours long. It was hard for people to say goodbye. Mom was the first to leave, and everyone else filtered out shortly after that.

The party was the last time that my brother Tom and his wife Vicky saw Mom. Tom did call when we were in Switzerland on what would’ve been Tuesday morning in St. Louis, Tuesday afternoon in Switzerland. The four of us talked for 40 minutes, with Vicky chiming in, in the background.  Mom loved it and I’m so glad that she and Tom had that last conversation together.

The week before she left, Mom celebrated 48 years of sobriety at her old Home Group, the Double Winners meeting. Her friend Rose presented her with a 50-year coin, saying she always wanted to give someone a 50-year coin. I had picked up Mom and Cathy at Bethesda to go to the meeting and as soon as Mom got in the car, we got a video call from the doctor in Switzerland to do the psych evaluation. He was two hours early (confused about the time difference), but it worked out perfectly. It was a five-minute call, he approved her for the VAD, and said he would prescribe the medication. We said thank you and goodbye to the doctor, and the three of us went on to the meeting.

Jenni was there. It was wonderful for my mom to have her two daughters and her granddaughter all at her last meeting. Jenni had told a friend of Mom‘s, Diane, that Mom was going to be celebrating 48 years at the meeting. Diane brought a platter full of pecan pie bars. My mom ate a couple and stashed four in her purse for later.

The next day, Thursday, Cathy picked Mom up and brought her over to my house so the three of us could do a last “girls’ dinner: together. We had two more dinners together on the trip, but this was the last meal at home for the three gals. We had started doing monthly dinners together after my dad died, each of us taking turns either cooking or buying. This last time, I cooked, making the sheet-pan shrimp-boil dinner that we all three loved. The recipe said it served six, but I doubled the amount of shrimp and still only had two small containers of leftovers. Mom and I video-chatted that Friday and I went over to her apartment on Saturday before we left Sunday, to make sure everything was in relative order. Mom told me she packed, and I took her at her word. I didn’t realize she literally brought zero changes of clothes.