“Craig came home absolutely shattered. He could not believe that Christians could say this to him,” Patsy recalls.
Craig accompanied Patsy to a meeting with the minister in charge to discuss the incident.
“I don’t think that he was too perturbed by what had happened but said that he would speak to the person running the cell group. I told him that he was allowing a cell group to be run in the form of a sect and that Craig and I would no longer be members of his church.”
They both later joined the St Cuthbert’s Anglican Church and attended regular services there.
After Patsy stopped teaching in 2004, mother and son would often spend afternoons either out shopping for the evening meal or clothes or going for a stroll on the beachfront. They both enjoyed coffee shops and would often sit together sampling various options on the menu.
Patsy would often scout out potential romantic possibilities for her son – a cute waitress in a restaurant or a cashier at a pharmacy – but they too more often than not came to naught.
While Neville usually worked long hours, Craig and Patsy settled down in the lounge after supper, reading or watching television and series such as Friends, which was Craig’s favourite. As his health deteriorated, Patsy and Craig became more insular, spending more quiet time at home and often napping together in the afternoons.
Craig, it seemed, was turning inwards. He had begun to slowly lose all interest in many of the smaller pleasures – including taking his granny out for drives in his car – that had once brought him some joy. Neville and Patsy saw considerably less of their wide circle of friends and Neville found this regretful to the extent that he would accept invites from friends on his own.
Craig found enormous comfort in music and had over a thousand songs on his iPod. He particularly liked The Corrs, the English singer-songwriters David Gray and James Blunt, Damien Rice, Chris Rea and Chris de Burgh. He enjoyed groups such as Watershed, Coldplay and the Travelling Wilburys. His classical music taste ranged from Bach to Mozart, Vivaldi and Beethoven, and he also enjoyed the light opera of performers such as Andrea Bocelli and Zucchero.
Craig was very keen on music and badly wanted to learn to play the guitar. He started acoustic guitar lessons with music teacher Dr Howard Nock in mid-2007. The teaching stopped towards the end of 2008 as a deeply seated and increasingly painful tumour in the muscles of his left arm took its toll.
In early 2009, Neville and Patsy were watching television when their son strolled into to the lounge after spending much of the evening hunched over his computer.
“He stood there and he said to us, ‘I think I’ve found my peace’,” Patsy recalls.
His parents were puzzled. When they asked Craig to explain what he meant, he told them that he had found a clinic in Switzerland, Dignitas, which, under certain circumstances, helped people to die “with dignity”.
Dignitas is the only organisation in the world that offers foreign nationals this service and requires them to become members by paying a registration fee of 200 Swiss Francs (about R1 757) and a “membership contribution” of 80 Swiss Francs (about R700). Then there is an additional fee of 3 000 Swiss Francs (about R27 000), described as a “special membership contribution” and which covers “the tasks we carry out” but which does not guarantee that the applicant will get the “green light”.
“At first I tried not to react. It was a hell of a shock. I couldn’t believe he was actually thinking of ending his life,” says Patsy.
Neville was disturbed by the announcement but decided to remain calm. He decided to let Craig entertain the idea as a way of dealing with how low he was feeling at that point.
“I didn’t think it would come to that. I thought that on the health side things would improve. He had had such a bad run of obstructions and I hoped that his luck would turn and he’d get a break.”
Neville reckoned that Craig had fought so bravely until then and that this was part of a process.
Pasty could not at first come to terms with Craig’s decision but felt that her support would provide him with a measure of peace in the meantime.
“But I sat with him on the bed one day and I said to him, ‘Craig, please don’t do this’,” she recalls.
Craig had responded that if Patsy didn’t want him to end his life he would respect her wishes. But, he added, she would have to bear some responsibility then for the pain and suffering in his life that was bound to escalate.
“I told him I could never do that to him. I could never stop him. Eventually I had to learn that the greatest love we can give someone is to let them go.”
After Craig had discovered Dignitas he became more and more focused on ending his life. Patsy remembers how surreal everything felt the day Craig went to the bank to make an international transfer to Dignitas to become a member.
“I needed to go somewhere and while driving in the car I was amazed that the world was just going on around me as if nothing was wrong,” she recalls.
Neville, while he was coming to terms with Craig’s decision, held on to a vague hope that his son would change his mind. Somehow word had got out in Port Elizabeth and Craig’s past paediatrician, Dr Wickens, contacted Neville and they decided to meet and discuss events that were unfolding in the Schonegevel household.
“We met in a hotel and we spoke for three hours. In those three hours he told me that in his opinion suicide was not a way out. He also said that he didn’t feel the decision was entirely up to Craig and that if I felt even remotely differently, it was my duty as a father to try to dissuade him from
