Over the weekend, The Guardian had what was presented as a great love story of our time. An elderly Australian couple has spent a lifetime together. She had a degenerative spinal condition. He had panic attacks because of the stress of her condition. And, so, of course, choose death, to die together. They have their last meals, as if on death row. Their granddaughter recalls:

The “event”, as we called it, was scheduled for 10.30, and we started assembling in their room from 9.30am. My dad opened bottles of champagne, and we all had our final bubbles together. The kitchen staff of their assisted living facility wheeled in a trolley laden with finger sandwiches, caramel slices and tea and coffee provision. Willie Nelson played. It felt like a party. It was a party.

Both my grandparents chose to die via medical assistance, rather than self-administer, requiring four medical personnel in the room. The two doctors shepherded us through the process with an endless amount of patience, empathy and care. They gently told us it was time, and Irene laid down next to Ron on the bed. The cannulas went in, the cords winding back and away, so the doctors could step back and allow us to be by their sides.

Ron and Irene held hands. The music changed to a soft version of You Are My Sunshine.

A party. In what kind of hell is this kind of death, and the trauma on the family left behind, a party?

She continues:

I sat next to Pop and held his other hand, while Mum, brother and cousins surrounded Nan on the other side. I whispered the first line of a favourite childhood story, and he smiled, picking up and taking over, telling it to me one last time.

Nan made a highly inappropriate joke — terrifying us that it would be her last words — before chuckling, and saying: “Here I go — love you all.”And then it happened. Calmly, quickly, with dignity. In a room full of love, with smiles on their faces and without any pain.We’d been told that hearing was the last sense to go, so we repeated I love you, I love you, I love you, until we were sure that they’d finally slipped away.

And so does our connection to what’s humane, each time we insist this is good and even beautiful. To have medicine do harm. To kill.