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OTTAWA — Kay Carter’s son, Price Carter, is planning to die this summer in the circumstances he wants.

The 68-year-old has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. He knows the disease will eventually take his life, and before that happens, he wants to spend his life peacefully with his family by his own choice.

“I was told from the beginning that this was palliative care, not a cure. That made the decision easy for me,” he said from his home in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Carter says he always knew that assisted dying (MAID) was an option he would use if and when the time was right.
And now, he has that option in large part because of his mother.

Kay Carter is named in a landmark Supreme Court of Canada case that gave Canadians the right to choose assisted dying more than a decade ago.

Price Carter says she has passed the first assessment and expects a second assessment to be done this week to confirm her eligibility. She spoke calmly and candidly about her final days and her decision to end her life.

“I’m completely at peace with it, I really am,” she added. “Even if it had been years ago, I would have made the same decision.”

It’s been almost a year since she started feeling symptoms and received her final diagnosis. Until a few months ago, she was still swimming and boating. She and her husband, Daniel, recently played a round of golf.

“He took me on the golf course with him,” Price says with a laugh.

But now her energy is waning. And she knows what she wants the next phase of her life to be like.

More than 15 years ago, Price, her sisters Marie and Lee, and the family’s son-in-law, Hollis, secretly traveled to Switzerland to be with their mother on her final day.
Kay Carter, 89, who suffered from spinal stenosis, decided to die at a nonprofit center that offered assisted dying services. She was the 10th Canadian to do so.

At the time, assisted dying was illegal in Canada.

Kay Carter wrote a letter explaining her decision, and her family prepared a list of about 150 people to send the letter to after her death.
She could not tell anyone before she died because there was a risk that Canadian authorities would prevent her from traveling to Switzerland or prosecute her family.

When he arrived at the Dinitas Center, he finalized his paperwork, lay down on the bed, and took the sleeping pill that was stopping his heart with Swiss chocolate.

“When she passed away, she just leaned back gently,” Price says.

After a few minutes, a staff member walked to the door, the curtains fluttering in the wind, and he said,

“Her spirit was released.”

“If I were to write a movie about this, I wouldn’t change a thing,” Price added.

He says the memory of that day still brings tears to his eyes, but not from the sadness; rather, from the beauty of the moment.

“I want my children to experience my death the same way I saw my mother die,” he says.

He wants his wife, Daniel, and their children to be with him when he dies.

His children — Lynn, Grayson, and Jenna — live in Ontario. He says everyone is busy and when the time comes, he will try to choose a day that is available to everyone.

Until then