George Pitcher (Oxford Mail, The Issue, October 26) gives a thoroughly misleading impression of what those of us (about 80 per cent of ordinary people) who believe in the right of choice at the end of our lives want from a change in the law.

The phrase “a law that allowed doctors to kill some of their patients” makes it sound as if our hero was Dr Shipman. But our hero is Dr Ann McPherson and those like her, whose patients have made their wishes clear and want her to be permitted to respect their wishes.

A few years before she died, my mother expressed her wishes in a short poem, titled A Last Message, which she gave to her doctor (before the days of the living will/advance directive, which can now be used): Let me go gently, gently into the Night.

Hold me not back with wires or feel it right To keep me here, though loved and loving, I am ready, Unwilling to linger in shadow or blankness, unsteady, Unknowing, in coma or stricken by stroke – know The me that was me is no longer, and so Feel Peace at my parting, wishing me well On my journey to somewhere – God? – Who can tell?

Having survived a severe coronary she hoped, even expected, to ‘go out like a light’.

But it was dementia which got her in the end, and all the things she had dreaded like incontinence.

The ‘her’ that was her was no longer. How she would have loved to have been spared her last two years – not of life, but of undignified existence.

Marigold Best Buckingham Street Oxford