Married 41 years​ and racked with pain, ​N.B. couple said goodbye together using MAID

Around 10:45 on the morning of Feb. 25, Lee Goguen asked her father if he had any last requests.

The death that was coming to 70-year-old Gerald Goguen was the death he had chosen weeks in advance and his wife of 41 years had chosen to go with him.   

Diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008, Gerald's health had started to deteriorate sharply in the months leading up to Christmas. Coby Goguen, 62, also had cancer that had spread and eaten into her bones. Both were racked with pain and wanted out. 

Lee said she wanted to see her parents relieved of their suffering and was grateful they had the option to end their lives on their own terms.   

"I got a lot of closure from it," Lee said. "It gave me the encouragement to say the things that might have gone unsaid."

Medical assistance in dying now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada, and demand in New Brunswick has been climbing year over year. 

Lee said she wasn't so sure about MAID when the procedure became legal in 2016, but her parents helped change her mind. In their final days in hospital, Lee asked their permission to speak publicly about it.   

With minutes to go before a sedative would put them to sleep and a second medication would induce a coma, Gerald asked to hear I Love You by the Climax Blues Band, a tune that was played on his wedding day. The vinyl record was back on the shelf in the Goguens'  home on Saint John's east side, but Lee had downloaded it to her phone and she played it for them. 

"My mom said, 'I haven't heard that in forever,'" Lee said.

It had been a hit in 1981, before Gerald married the most beautiful woman he said he'd ever seen. Lee is convinced that's still how Gerald saw Coby as he gazed at his wife lying next to him in her hospital bed. 

"Mom just leaned back and listened to the music," Lee said. "And Dad, he didn't stop looking at her. He was just so in love." 

New Brunswick's two health networks have reported a slow but steady increase in MAID applications over the past five years. The Vitalité Health Network says requests for MAID more than doubled, from 105 requests in 2020 to 216 in 2024. 

"It's just been a continual increase in demand," said Horizon's palliative care physician Dr. Julia Wildish.

"I think initially everyone was a bit leery of the idea. It was sort of a new concept to people and kind of creepy maybe. But I think over time, people are more familiar with it. They know someone who's had it. They've had time to wrap their heads around the whole idea, and it's just not as scary."