Blur drummer Dave Rowntree reveals his terminally ill ex-wife was forced to travel to…

October 31, 2024, 11:27 | Updated: October 31, 2024, 11:36 am

Blur drummer Dave Rowntree has told for the first time how his terminally ill ex-wife flew to Switzerland alone earlier this year to end her life at Dignitas.

Rowntree, 60, slammed Britain’s assisted dying laws as ‘psychopathic’ as he joined calls for a change in the law to allow adults with months to live to be helped to take their own lives.

His ex-wife Paola Marra, whom he married in the 1990s, flew alone to Zurich in March this year after she was diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer.

She decided that she didn’t want to suffer an uncertain fate and probably a painful death, so she decided to travel to Dignitas to end her life.

In a poignant film released after her death, Marra, of East Finchley, north London, said: “By the time you see this, I will be dead. I choose to seek euthanasia because I refuse to let a terminal illness dictate the terms of my existence.

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“The pain and suffering can become unbearable. It is a slow erosion of dignity, the loss of independence, the removal of everything that makes life worth living.

“Euthanasia is not about giving up. In fact, it’s about regaining control. It’s not about death. It’s about dignity.

“It’s about giving people the right to end their suffering on their own terms, with compassion and respect.

“So while you’re watching this, I’m dead. But if you watch this, it might help change the laws around assisted dying.”

Speaking to The Guardian, Rowntree said: “This is psychopathic where we are now because the whole point of this is to try to make things easier for the real victim in this – the terminally ill person.

“’I certainly would not support a bill that allows anyone to kill others.

He said the current law makes any terminally ill person who wants control over their own death a “pariah”.

He added: “When the time comes, if they decide to die with dignity and end their lives at a time of their choosing and in a way of their choosing, they must do so without the support of anyone, on their own , unable to hold anyone’s hand, unable to hug anyone and say goodbye.”

Terminally ill expat Esther Rantzen has also argued for changing the laws on assisted dying.