Author Wendy Mitchell has died after battling dementia and left a final message where she announced her own death to fans.
The 68-year-old became a best-selling writer after being diagnosed with early-onset dementia and Alzheimer’s in July 2014.
The author revealed how she had taken the decision to refuse to eat or drink anymore in a posthumous post shared online.
She wrote in an open letter: “If you’re reading this, it means this has probably been posted by my daughters as I’ve sadly died.
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“In the end I died simply by deciding not to eat or drink any more,” Ms Mitchell wrote.
“The last cuppa tea … my final hug in a mug, the hardest thing to let go of, much harder than the food I never craved … This wasn’t decided on a whim of self-pity as you’ll discover by reading on.
“Dementia is a cruel disease that plays tricks on your very existence. I’ve always been a glass half full person, trying to turn the negatives of life around and creating positives, because that’s how I cope. Well I suppose dementia was the ultimate challenge.
“Yes, dementia is a bummer, but oh what a life I’ve had playing games with this adversary of mine to try and stay one step ahead.”
The writer was known for her works, Somebody I Used to Know, One Last Thing: How to Live with the End in Mind, and What I wish people knew about Dementia.
She spent twenty years as a non-clinical team leader in the British National Health Service before she was diagnosed at the age of 58.
The keen runner raised her two daughters as a single mother, and documented and spoke openly about how the disease affected her. She would set alarms on her phone to remind her to eat and drink, and found simple tasks like watering flowers in her garden, tough.
In her book One Last Thing, she wanted to open up the conversation surrounding death and end-of-life care. She also told The Guardian her ‘final’ book was about making her passing more comfortable for anyone she left behind.
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“What I want this book to do is open up everyone’s minds on the importance of talking.
“It could even be as simple as: cremation or burial? I’ve realised since writing, many people don’t even know that about the closest person to them, because they’re uncomfortable having that conversation.”
She was a supporter of assisted drying, which is not legal in the UK. It is illegal under the terms of the Suicide Act (1961), and is punishable by up to 14 years in jail.
“I’m not asking for everyone to agree with me, I simply want to have a choice,” she explained.
“It is at the centre of everything we do as humans every day – or at least those of us lucky enough to enjoy the choice of bodily autonomy and who are not bound by regimes or other strict diktats,” Mitchell writes.
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“And yet, we have no choice over when we die, or at least we don’t in the country I live in.”
