By the time I made it home she was unconscious. The staff at the rest home were nothing short of amazing and her children never left her side.
But watching someone you love die a slow death is not easy. Watching them suffer is unbearable. When I walked through the door I was knocked for six as her fragile body, now skin and bone, rasped and rattled and rasped again.
Every time she had a slight seizure the nurses would come and jab her again and tell us it was all ''normal'' when someone exited the world this way.
My brother, in a rare sign of emotion, bailed me up outside the room and whispered ''this is not right, I would not let my dog suffer like this''.
For my father, it was a slow process of about 10 years. He had cancer and battled it to the end.
A tall, strapping man, by the time he took his last breath he was emaciated. In his last days he was high on morphine which provided some mercy.
My mother was his main caregiver and I will never forget being on duty while she had a break and he needed to go for a pee.
He was bedridden and looked at me with anguish and said I didn't have to help him but wetting the bed would have been a greater indignity.
My dad was a proud man, a diamond in the rough, but he was denied the chance of a peaceful death. He had to endure an agonising fight with cancer that he had no chance of winning.
I feel strongly that if they had the choice both my father and sister would have opted for euthanasia.
That is why I am voting yes. For them.