Death held little mystery for Gill Pharaoh. She’d seen it up close and voluntarily went to meet it when she was still happy and healthy. It wasn’t the grim reaper she feared but the years of physical and mental decline that sometimes precede it. She had been a palliative care nurse. She trained carers and had written books on best practice. She’d also cared for her mother who’d suffered from dementia.

And she was determined to side-step the lingering decline of her patients. Instead, aged 75, she travelled to a clinic in Switzerland to seek a swift and painless death. It’s a shocking story. It seems to fly in the face of nature. Most of us cling to life and banish from our minds the reality that we walk every day towards the grave. So for a contented affluent woman, in good health, with a loving partner, two children and a grandson to end it all is upsetting.

It’s even more shocking to discover she wasn’t some crank. She was a thoughtful, intelligent woman who knew what she was talking about and knew what she was doing.

Did that give her the right to take her own life? If so, what does it tell us about growing old? Should we all fear for our long term future?

In a parting message, Ms Pharaoh said that, up until the age of 70, people tended to enjoy good health. Many deteriorated rapidly thereafter. At 75, she’d suffered some hearing loss and tinnitus. She wasn’t enjoying gardening the way she had and found it easier to cook small lunches than large dinner parties. She could no longer walk great distances and was suffering the odd twinge in the mornings.

Clearly she felt these signs were for her the beginning of the final stage, the one she was determined to dodge.

She had said: "I do not think old age is fun. I have gone over the hill now. It is not going to start getting better."

What message must her death send to others approaching, or even in, their 70s? If she preferred death should they too be thinking about a one way ticket to Basel?

Or was her view of old age too restricted?

Her professional experience of the elderly was in palliative care so she saw the worst that ageing can do. Her personal story involved a mother with dementia so it was gloom and gloom again. Might she have thought differently if she had taken a few steps back and looked at the broader picture?

Almost one in five people in Scotland is over 65 years old and 850 have reached their 100th birthday. Half of those aged 75 and over describe their health as very good or good and, when life satisfaction is measured, the young and the old score higher than the middle aged. Even mental wellbeing is slightly better over the age of 75 than in the 45-54 age range.

I have relatives and friends in their 70s and 80s who are lively. They have interventions and remedies that help keep them active, mentally agile, culturally interested, socially involved and often game for adventure.

I’m not being Polyanna; among them are many who have had cancer or another serious illness. They have been able to put it behind them. I know some are more fortunate with their health than others. Some swallow handfuls of pills daily and suffer arthritis or the side effects of diabetes. But modern medicine has much to offer and new horizons are regularly breached.

Also (as was not the case with Gill Pharaoh) expectations adjust. When I was 10 I though every tree was for climbing. In my 20s music could only be listened to at full blast. You get my drift. I haven’t yet developed a passion for gardening and a weakness for Cash in the Attic but give me time.

And I do laugh when I hear June Whitfield’s advertisement for a stair lift so fast you can still remember why you wanted to use it in the first place.

I respect Gill Pharaoh’s decision but I find it sad and puzzling. I understand that she had no religious belief and thought we shouldn’t clutter up hospitals and become a burden to our children. From her standpoint what she did was logical. She was avoiding any prospect of indignity.

But isn’t life about something deeper than having fun and then clocking out before we cause a mess?

What I fail to understand is how she could have taken such drastic action possibly a decade before it was necessary. I also marvel that, even in Switzerland, the law allowed it. She went to an organisation called Lifecircle in Basel which refers those who wish to die to the Eternal SPIRIT Foundation. It states that a Swiss physician assesses any request on the basis of medical documents. All applicants from abroad must have two discussions with the physician.

Eligibility seems to involve the applicant having a terminal illness or an incurable disease; conditions such as motor neuron disease or multiple sclerosis. It’s difficult to see how Gill Pharaoh qualified. The website offers only a post box and I could find no details of payment beyond a small membership fee.

The more established Dignitas offers clear financial guidelines. An assisted suicide with funeral and registry office expenses costs about £7,770, payable in advance.

How ethical is it for organisations to take payments from people who are well? It isn’t.

The other group that could be affected by Gill Pharaoh’s death are those with desperate illnesses who want the right to end their lives at home. Their hopes of a change in Scottish law were dashed when the Assisted Suicide Scotland Bill was defeated by 82 votes to 36.

At Westminster, the Assisted Dying Bill will be debated in the House of Commons in September. The bill, which ran out of time in the House of Lords, was championed by former Lord Chancellor, Charles Falconer. He argued that, at present, only the rich can go to Switzerland. The majority depend on amateur assistance and the compassionate are treated like criminals.

This made a persuasive case. The bill would allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose to a patient judged to have six months or fewer to live who requested it. It could help someone like Jeffrey Spector, a happy husband and father with an inoperable tumour on his spine. He described himself as a walking time-bomb. He so dreaded paralysis that he went to Dignitas early for fear of being unable to travel.

He said: "I am jumping the gun. Don’t judge me."

Which of us could? But people in his position must fear that the Gill Pharaoh case will influence parliamentarians. Will they regard a law that allows the assisted suicide of the terminally ill as a wedge in the door that, in due course, will allow the healthy to opt for death too?

I’m sure that would be the last thing she intended. But life isn’t predictable. And isn’t that the nub of the matter? None of us can know what the future holds. We might be struck down by a great misfortune or stay active until a great age. But surely until we have all hope removed, isn’t travelling hopefully the essence of life?