I agree too.
But with the the daughter of Lily Boeykens, it looks like a different story. Maybe Lily Boeykens did want to die alone, without her loved ones, maybe not. The article is coloured against euthanasia, so not sure how true the version is where the daughter gets told her mother's death can't be delayed with a little bit of time.
Vermeersch’s petition gained Tom some notoriety, and people began introducing him to others who had become disenchanted by aspects of the law. Recently, he began corresponding with the daughter of Lily Boeykens, the country’s most prominent feminist, who asked for euthanasia because she showed preliminary signs of Alzheimer’s. After two doctors rejected her request—she was still living on her own, giving interviews, and throwing dinner parties—Boeykens, who was seventy-four, found a neurologist at the University of Antwerp, Peter De Deyn, who agreed to euthanize her. She told the doctor, who studied Alzheimer’s, that she would give him her brain for his research. In an audiotaped conversation, she explained to her daughter that “De Deyn will keep the part of my body that he needs.”
On the morning on which the euthanasia was scheduled, Boeykens’s daughter, Kerstin, said that she called De Deyn, crying, and begged him to move her mother’s 9 A.M. appointment a few hours later, so that she would have time to drop her children off at school and then drive to the clinic. But De Deyn said that he was booked for the rest of the day. (De Deyn denies that this happened.) Records show that Boeykens died at 9:20 A.M., at which point De Deyn removed her brain and performed an autopsy. Kerstin filed a complaint with the Belgian Order of Physicians, writing that “my mother and Dr. P. P. De Deyn made a deal: brains in exchange for assistance with suicide.”
De Deyn, who has euthanized thirty patients suffering from dementia, maintained that the euthanasia date had been determined before they discussed the donation of Boeykens’s brain. He dismissed Kerstin’s account, telling me that she was a psychiatric patient—the same thing that Distelmans said about Tom when discounting his complaints. (Kerstin said that she has no history of psychiatric treatment, a fact that her primary-care doctor confirmed.) The chairman of the Belgian Order of Physicians told Kerstin that she would not be informed of the consequences of her complaint because the process was secret. “I am pro-euthanasia—I don’t want to get rid of it,” she told me. “I just want to shut down these cowboys. They’re a clique; they protect each other.”
The relevant issue here isn't whether Tom OR Kerstin was mentally ill or not (and it still disturbs me that that's even being treated as relevant). It's whether the wishes of the patient were followed. Beginning stages of dementia would still mean Lily Boeykens was able to make her own decisions about herself.
And, for Kerstin, that is honestly kind of unclear based on the information provided: Did De Deyn basically tell her mother "Welp, your kid's a no-show, but you have to die on my schedule or not at all," or was there more to it? Because, I gotta say, who the FUCK doesn't find SOME way to make sure the kids get to school (or are otherwise taken care of) when they KNOW THE EXACT DAY AND TIME THEIR PARENT IS GOING TO DIE??? Really, seriously, think about that for a second. The excuse given that Kerstin didn't show up wasn't anything that couldn't have been foreseen and planned around, either on her part or her mother's part (this is not "My car broke down" or "the kids are sick" or anything that would have come at all as a surprise).
Now, if her mother was somehow prevented from knowing she was running late (whatever the reason) and the plan was for Kerstin to be there, then yes, there's reason to complain. But without knowing what her mom knew about- and without knowing whatever else may have been going on (for all we know she'd done this several times already as a way to try and keep her mom from doing it, and the article just didn't bother to mention that)- we really can't judge. But it sure as hell sounds like there's more to the story.
This, again, sounds like the child of the euthanasia patient wants to be pissed at someone because they weren't there when they feel they should have been.
