My lovely sister Jemima Dixon died on 5^th July, 2017 when she was 46. 

J was a kind, incredibly loving, fun and spiritual person.  She was caring of others and spent time listening to people and helping them through difficult times. Jemima had an unnecessary amount of pain and suffering through the 17 years of her many and varied illnesses.  I am not going to list these for you, but I think it is sufficient to say her illnesses went beyond MS and ME.  Living with full-time care and bed-bound she was lonely at times.  As her friends and family we tried to protect her and give her as much love, support, companionship and happiness as we could. 

For Jemima, however this was not enough to compensate for losing the ability to have amazing experiences and the active life that she had when she was healthy.  So last year J bravely decided it was her time to go to Dignitas for an assisted suicide.  Her experience at Dignitas was peaceful and calm, my mother and I held her hands and she felt loved right to the end.  

When she was alive Jemima had a huge amount of support from her local hospice St Lukes (Cheshire) Hospice who helped her through the really tough times that she faced.  Some of the really fabulous people who supported J from the Hospice and became good friends and confidants were Rick the Vic, Jill Cox and Katie Latham. 

Rick visited J regularly and they built up a great friendship.  Jemima really looked forward to his visits because Rick made her laugh, helped her to open up about her deepest fears and he was able to keep up with her intellectual pace - which quite frankly I never could!  From a personal perspective, Rick also helped me wrestle with some demons after J died - so I will always be deeply grateful to him for that.

Katie Latham was introduced to Jemima by Jill Cox who ran the befriending service at St Lukes.  They struck up a long-standing relationships with J that existed outside of the befriending service.  They were real friends to J - in the real world.  Katie and her family gave Jemima an enormous amount of joy in the period of J’s life that they knew her.  They had lots and lots of fun afternoons and evenings in Winsford and they also went on holiday with J to Wales which she really adored.

St Lukes also provided J with support from their team regularly to help her fill in the many and varied complex forms that she struggled to complete.  I know it was such a great relief to her to know she was doing them correctly.

I can’t thank St Lukes (Cheshire) Hospice enough for all that they did for J when she was alive, but hopefully through this fundraising I can give back just a little bit to them.

J believed she shouldn't have had to go to Switzerland for an assisted suicide, so I've started writing a blog to tell our story.  If you would like to find out more just visit:   https://20past12.wordpress.com/