Wollongong-born author Nikki Gemmell's mother had been planning to take her own life for years but her death came as a shock to her children and friends.
It was the builders who found the body.
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They’d been renovating Elayn’s bathroom – and taking their time about it too.
One Friday morning, they knocked but no one answered. Letting themselves in with a key she’d supplied, they found her in front of the TV, a bottle of Bailey’s and an empty jar of pills beside her.
"I would have loved to be there at the end of my mother’s life, holding her hand in a room brimming with love and gratitude."
She’d chosen to go after planning it for a number of years.
After having enough of dealing with chronic pain caused by ongoing foot problems that send lightning jolts of agony up her leg with each step.
And now her daughter, author Nikki Gemmell, and her family and siblings had to deal with what came next – with what came “after”.
Gemmell uses that word “After” as the title of her book about her mother's life and the journey through the world of euthanasia in the wake of her mother’s final actions.
The Wollongong-born writer says the book was the hardest she’d ever written, because of the need to be honest, to show her mother as she knew her in all her glories and grey areas.
A woman who Gemmell says knew her weaknesses and would home on them but who she also describes as “magnificent”.
“A lot of times my heart was in my mouth thinking, ‘have I gone too far here?’, Gemmell says of writing the book.
“But I wanted to write a very honest portrayal of a complex mother-daughter relationship. I knew there were a lot of women out there who have very complex relationships with their mothers or their daughters.
“I knew the truth of this would resonate.”
Gemmell has two brothers but says After is her story – not theirs – because she had a different relationship with her mother than they did. Likewise, Elayn’s friends might not exactly recognise Gemmell’s version of the woman.
“Mum and I had a very difficult relationship, but also an exceptionally loving relationship,” she said.
“The book is about honouring the magnificence of this Wollongong woman, saying she was amazing and her life was amazing.
“I never got to say that to her when she was alive, I never got to convey my gratitude for what she did for me and I deeply regret that.”
The idea that we never say things like that to people we love while they’re alive and regret it when they die is a common human trait.
But Gemmell says some readers of After have been inspired to make that phone call, to speak those words.
“I will say that so many women who have read After already have said ‘oh my God, I had to ring my mum and tell her I love her and how grateful I am for her’.”
Elayn’s life was full of secrets, Gemmell says. There were parts of her life that, once past, were put away in boxes never to be reopened.
She was a model before she met her husband, yet it was only after Elayn died that he saw her magazine ads and modelling photos.
When they divorced, it seems Elayn put her Wollongong life into another box when she moved to Sydney to “live a bigger life”, as Gemmell puts it.
She also managed to put her desire to end her life into one of those boxes, dipping into it for years but keeping it hidden from her children.
And it was years – Gemmell says Elayn had been talking with pro-euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke for almost a decade before the builders walked in that Friday morning.
“My mum lived a lot of her life in secrecy,” Gemmell says.
“All her darling Wollongong friends, they have no idea, just as I had no idea, that mum was so fully immersed in the world of euthanasia. So she had a secret life and a secret wish in terms of how to end her life which had formulated almost a decade before she killed herself.”
There was a very valid reason to keep her desires secret. Knowledge of her plans, and certainly any sort of assistance given, would have left her children in legal jeopardy.
When police knocked on Gemmell’s door to deliver the news, they discreetly pulled out their notebooks and started asking her questions to see whether she had been complicit.
And so, Elayn was forced to leave the world alone.
“Elayn, God love her, she had an utterly bleak and lonely death and I am wracked with guilt over that. I just wish there were euthanasia laws in place for someone like Elayn because then she would have had peace of mind knowing that at some stage she was able to do what she really wanted to do in terms of ending her life.
”Instead, her last year was filled with fear and desolation and loneliness. I would have loved to be there at the end of my mother’s life, holding her hand in a room brimming with love and gratitude.
“But in the end, Mum - to not implicate any of her family or her friends - she just did it alone entirely by herself. I just think that’s an utterly bleak way to die.”
Some have described Gemmell writing about her mother's death as “brave”, but she herself prefers to think of After by a different adjective.
“I would say that it’s honest, and whether being honest is equated with bravery or courage then so be it,” she said.
“I find with all my writing that honesty connects, it connects with people.”
And that’s carried through to talking about the book after its publication. Having to speak over and over about her mother’s death hasn’t been traumatic but helpful – and not just for herself.
“I’m finding it incredibly healing,” she said.
“I’m starting to do forums attached to bookshops or libraries and it’s wonderful. What the book seems to be doing is starting a conversation; people stand up in the audience and say ‘this is my story’. Or they ask me about chronic pain, or euthanasia or the mother-daughter relationship.”
Gemmell grew up in Keiraville – living in houses in Robsons Road, Cedar Grove and Shoobert Crescent and attending the local primary school.
As expected, she has some strong memories of the place she grew up in.
“My brothers had a redback spider farm in the garage in ice cream containers,” she says.
“We had funnel web spiders in the swimming pool. And my world growing up was very much one of going up the bush tracks into Mt Keira – my brothers had trail bikes and I’d ride on the back.
“We were all friends with the kids on the street and we’d play six and out cricket in the middle of Shoobert Crescent.”
Then, when her parents divorced halfway through Year Six, she and her mother moved to Sydney.
After a long stint living in London, Gemmell is now back in Sydney but has friends in Wollongong she visits regularly.
“Keiraville the suburb has not changed,” she says.
“Driving around it, it still feels exactly the same, except for the university, which has expanded. But it still feels very sleepy and on the outer of Wollongong.”