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
– Befrienders Worldwide, external
– NHS Help for suicidal thoughts, external
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.”
