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  A socialite who chose to die at 50 rather than watch her looks fade had requested that a full-length mirror be installed at her favourite gourmet restaurant. Doctors warned that the mother of three, whose identity is being withheld by an order from the High Court, had “a narcissistic personality disorder” that clouded her judgment. She died on Saturday after winning a battle to stop the dialysis that might have cured her.
  
  She suffered severe kidney and liver damage when she tried to kill herself by washing down 60 tablets with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on a beach in southern England after the breakdown of her most recent relationship.
  
  Mr Justice MacDonald at the Court of Protection ruled that her decision to refuse treatment might be unwise or immoral but was not beyond her capacity, despite doctors’ warnings to the contrary. The woman, known only as C, leaves three daughters, the youngest of whom is a teenager.
  
  Having married four times and “recklessly” spent her lovers’ money in a series of turbulent relationships, she would frequent the races and was a fan of polo. The court heard that C, who complained that she might seem “past her sell-by date” when she found she was to become a grandmother, had breast cancer diagnosed last year but declined treatment for fear that its affect on her weight would prevent her wearing a bikini. She had also said that she did not want to “live in a council flat”, be poor or be ugly.
  
  A friend told the Daily Mail: “She [her daughter] said she wouldn’t go as far as to say she was going to see the angels, because she didn’t know that would be true, but she would miss her deeply. “She said her mum was the life, soul and sparkle of any party and to raise a glass of something fizzy to her.”
  
  Her first husband added: “She was a good mum; she used to be a nanny before we got married. She had a lot of marriages and affairs, and she wasn’t very good with money. She enjoyed life.”
  
  It is understood that her family had supported her wishes, saying that her decision to die fitted with her “unusual personality”.
  
  It emerged yesterday that King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust had sent a report to the judge from a psychiatrist who believed that she was in no fit mental state to decline treatment. “Dr Stevens diagnosed a narcissistic personality disorder which constituted an impairment or disturbance in the functioning of her mind,” Mr Justice MacDonald’s report states. The doctor nevertheless wrote that, despite being aware that she had a good prospect of recovering and coming off dialysis, “C was able to make a decision at that time regarding the withdrawal of active medical treatment”.
  
  A second doctor, named as Dr R, said that the condition was “preventing C from reaching what he describes as ‘a balanced, nuanced, used and weighed position’,” the report states. Professor P found that she had “demonstrated no ability to consider and weigh alternative futures, no ability to place herself in her daughters’ shoes when considering the effect of her refusing treatment or to weigh the impact on them of her suicide”.
  
  A court order banning the publication of the woman’s identity ended when she died, but her family won an extension.
  
  Mr Justice MacDonald, ruling that C should be allowed to die, wrote in his judgment: “By her own account, the account of her eldest daughters and the account of her father, C has led a life characterised by impulsive and self-centred decision-making without guilt or regret. “She has, by their account, been an entirely reluctant and at times completely indifferent mother to her three caring daughters. Her consumption of alcohol has been excessive and, at times, out of control.” He said that she appeared to agree with those who knew her that she was “a person who seeks to live life entirely, and unapologetically on her own terms; that life revolving largely around her looks, men, [and] material possessions.” The judge added that it was “clear that during her life C has placed a significant premium on youth and beauty and on living a life that, in C’s words, ‘sparkles’.”

Commentary

• The socialite given permission to die is simply taking society’s superficial values to an extreme.
  
  It makes perfect sense that C, the 50-year-old socialite who was given legal permission to reject life-saving medical treatment, prefered to die before she got old. Four times married and with many affairs behind her, her life revolved around the only three elements she valued: her looks, her relationships with men and her material possessions. Once she had lost all three her existence had no purpose.
  
  C had always been candid about her impulsive and self-centred behaviour, and her prizing of wealth, youth and sexual attractiveness. She had three daughters who clearly felt deep affection for her, but they described her as an “entirely reluctant and at times completely indifferent mother”. She was furious when one daughter became pregnant because becoming a grandmother made her feel that she was approaching her sell-by date. She had an entirely instrumental and short-term view of her relationships, spending her partners’ money recklessly and moving on once the arguments began or the money ran out.
  
  The judge in her case has acknowledged that many people will be horrified by what they may think is an unreasonable or immoral decision. But he agreed that because she was of sound mind she had a right to live or die according to her personality and her values.
  
  C was right, and so is the judge, because life only has the meaning we choose to ascribe to it. Our secular society recognises that there are no absolutes. Our lives are only worth living if we feel that they are so. There are thousands of possible reasons to find life valuable, but we don’t find them by being ordered to do so. They have to make emotional and psychological sense to us.
  
  C’s priorities may look shockingly superficial and selfish. Her choices will make some of us intensely uncomfortable, and perhaps part of this is that her reasoning threatens our own certainties. If she saw no point in life once her powers diminished, why should we? Clearly she had no joy from her friendships, no sense of service to others, and had no faith.
  
  We might wish that at the very least a sense of love and duty towards her children would have replaced her hedonism. But she had simply internalised an exaggerated version of the messages that besiege all of us every day. Youth, beauty, eroticism and money all confer degrees of power and respect on those who possess them. The aged and poor have little value. Ageing is seen as a horror that should be fought and denied with time, money, personal trainers and medical help.
  
  Women are punished particularly hard for getting old, disappearing from films, television screens and glossy magazines; taunted for visible attempts to resist ageing, yet sneered at if they don’t try. But men are not exempt. They too are under pressure to retain their powers. A separated, once-handsome older man said to me, resentfully, that it was a myth that men always stayed desirable as they aged. That was only true, he said, for the successful ones. Men without a house or career had no value in the market.
  
  This denigration of ageing, and the lauding of achievement, means that we all need to find meanings in our lives that will sustain us all the way from youth into our eighth and ninth decades. If we value only our transient qualities, from health to beauty to success at work, then at some point — a critical illness, a retirement, a sacking — most of us are going to be intensely miserable and disappointed.
  
  Worse, if those are what we focus on, we will probably have gathered around us a social circle who like us for those abilities and who may not have much interest in us when we falter. And having a sense of meaning is critical not just for wellbeing but for longevity. Research among thousands of over-forties shows that those who had inner purpose were much more likely to be alive seven years later.

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