TV Reviews : Poignant Story of a Mother’s ‘Last Wish’

“I wish I could have died with my hair,” Ida Rollin says shortly before slipping into a pill-induced sleep from which she won’t awaken.

It’s a sad release from a sweet, poignant and devastatingly somber TV adaptation of Betty Rollin’s book about her mother’s decision to end her own life rather than suffer the last terrible stages of terminal cancer.

Strong performances by Patty Duke as Betty and Maureen Stapleton as Ida, a sensitive, sermon-free script by Jerome Kass and intelligent direction by Jeff Bleckner make ABC’s “Last Wish” much more than a two-hour death watch. Airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42, it confronts head on the moral and legal sides of the euthanasia issue, tracing Betty’s wrenching decision to grant her widowed mother’s request and help her die.

Just when--if ever--is it humane and proper to assist in the death of someone who wants to die? Unlike most issue-oriented TV movies, “Last Wish” makes its case without lecturing.

Ida Rollin’s seemingly routine stomach ache turns out to be ovarian cancer. The chemotherapy medical treatment is itself a nightmare; the side effects include debilitating nausea and--to Ida’s horror--the loss of her independence along with her hair.

Nor does it help that the heavies here are not only the disease but also the doctor, a brusk, aloof practitioner who appears more concerned with treating the affliction than the patient. “How can you be so indifferent to a person’s suffering?” Betty snaps.

Mother and daughter gradually come together on the logic and humanity of Ida dying swiftly and by her own timetable rather than draining away slowly and agonizingly. As “that thing inside of her” grows, so does Ida’s determination to die, placing on Betty the crushing moral and emotional burden of finding a way for her mother to achieve her suicide.

Although hardly a lookalike for Rollin, Duke convincingly plays a daughter who wants to end her mother’s suffering, but not her life. And Stapleton gives a bravura performance, breathing delicate life into a woman approaching death.

Although unavoidably sad, it becomes a tidy death--almost as if a light had been switched off--affirming that expiring with dignity and without pain definitely beats the alternative.