It looked like a fun family vacation in Switzerland: driving through quaint historic towns in a rented Mercedes, and dining on hearty mountain food in chic eateries.
But for Trish Parker, 90, an accomplished Northeast Ohio artist with three college degrees, this visit to Europe would not finish in an airport departure lounge.
It ended on Thanksgiving Day 2024 with her two sons chauffeuring her to a suicide clinic, where she ended her life with a lethal cocktail of drugs.
Now, her children have paid tribute to their self-possessed mom and spoken about the unusual trip to a death clinic in Liestal, in northern Switzerland.
‘It was just so surreal,’ Jud Parker, 64, the middle child, told USA Today.
Jud says she was ‘probably the healthiest 90-year-old you’d ever meet’, who was likely not eligible for a doctor-assisted suicide in any of the US states where procedures are allowed.
Still, Trish insisted that her kids support her ‘1,000 percent’ and they fell into line.
The Parkers’ trip pulls back the curtain on the tough end-of-life decisions that US families increasingly navigate, as people live longer and have more options for a doctor-assisted death.
A 1960s-era photo of Trish Parker and her husband, Esidore Justin Parker. He died in 2001 and she remarried.
Trish Parker, a 90-year-old Plain Township mom and grandma, went to Switzerland during Thanksgiving week for her planned physician-assisted death
Plain Township’s Trish Parker was a prolific, and highly-decorated, artist. Many of her works remain for sale today
The family was far from the Ohio home where Patricia Ann ‘Trish’ Regenhardt raised her three sons, outlived two husbands and painted abstract expressionist art in her studio each day.
They’d spent the last few nights at a four-star hotel, taking in the sights, shopping, and enjoying Swiss cuisine.
Jud Parker drove their rented Mercedes and another son, Reed Parker, 67, sat next to him.
The youngest sibling, Texas-based Curtiss, but did not come on the trip.
‘We’re driving through the countryside… mountains,’ Jud recalled of the journey to the Pegasos Swiss Association, the chosen death clinic.
Once there, a nurse explained how Trish would get an IV line, and that she would ultimately push the button to administer a lethal dose of barbiturates.
‘He said, ‘You will go to sleep, but you won’t wake up’,’ Jud recalled, which made him tear up.
The next day, the Parkers returned to Pegasos and chatted with five staff members about art, politics, and travel for some 90 minutes.
Then, Trish interjected.
‘Okay, it’s time to do this,’ she said, as she headed to a bed near a window on one side of the room.
She urged her sons to ‘go in the other room’.
Jud says his knees buckled as he and his brother left.
Twenty minutes later, Trish was dead. The brothers returned to the room to say goodbye to their mom.
Trish Parker typically painted under the name Patricia Zinsmeister Parker throughout her career
People travel from far and wide to end their lives at the Pegasos Swiss Association
‘She was the best mother, wife and artist; she nailed them all,’ Jud said.
Trish had decided many years previously that she may end her life in that manner.
She was influenced by the physician Dr. Jack Kevorkian, an advocate of the procedures who was known as Dr Death.
Kevorkian helped as many as 130 people kill themselves, a cause that landed him in prison. He died in 2011.
‘She was fascinated by Kevorkian; he was a hero to her,’ Jud said.
‘I’m going to do that, boys,’ she told her sons during the Kevorkian years.
She fixed upon the idea after her second husband, Robert Regenhardt, died in April 2023, as she researched the procedures online.
Medically assisted suicide is available in 10 US states and Washington DC, but not in Ohio.
Most of those states require residency status and a verified terminal illness diagnosis.
Trish was relatively healthy, so she opted for Pegasos, where staff speak English and much of the paperwork can be done online.
‘I know she contacted them about six months after (the death of her second husband),’ Jud said.
The family flew to Zurich and drove to the assisted-dying clinic in Liestal, in northern Switzerland
Liestal is an industrial town. Most of its roughly 14,000 residents speak German
Trish Parker was influenced by the physician Dr Jack Kevorkian, an advocate of assisted dying who was known as Dr Death
‘They told her she had to wait … so she did that. A year later, she asked again.’
They accepted her; she made arrangements.
Trish told her family, saying: ‘I am going to do this, and I want you to support me 1,000 percent, or I’m going to go without you,’ Jud recalled.
Jud and the rest of the Parker family told her they supported her decision.
Besides her three sons, Trish had five grandchildren.
In the weeks before the trip to Switzerland, she took some to lunch, but did not discuss her planned death.
Last November, she and Jud flew from Cleveland to New York and then Zurich. Reed flew separately, from his home in California.
Pegasos officials declined to comment on Trish’s visit.
‘Privacy and confidentiality are at the center of our commitment,’ they wrote in an email.
‘This is why we cannot share, confirm, nor deny the identities of those wanting to die with Pegasos in public.’
Its website and a few news stories help to explain its business of voluntary assisted dying, which costs $11,000.
The procedures are lawful in Switzerland if the person is mentally competent to make decisions, has unselfish motives, and controls the device which administers a death drug.
Seattle resident Robert Fuller begins to plunge the drugs that will end his life into his feeding tube in Washington, one of several US states with an assisted dying program
Supporters of assisted suicide schemes say they help some desperately sick people end their suffering.
‘It’s about living your life with an understanding that death is a part of it,’ said Lisa Vigil Schattinger, executive director of the nonprofit Ohio End of Life Options.
Critics say they devalue human life and make death a solution for the infirm, disabled and even those who are cash-strapped or feel like a burden.
Oregon became the first US state to allow physician-assisted suicide in 1997, allowing terminally ill adult Oregonians, with less than six months left to live, to ask doctors for a fatal dose of drugs they then administer themselves, typically at home.
In 2018, then-state Senator Joe Schiavoni, co-sponsored an assisted dying bill in Ohio, but it never made it out of committee.