Gill Stokes was a grandma extraordinaire. Fully present in her four grandchildren’s daily lives, she fronted up to every school assembly, always had home-baking in the tins and could whip up a last-minute costume with the utmost skill.
Or if her daughter, TVNZ star Melissa Stokes, ever needed to be up at 3am to present Breakfast, Grandma Gill – or “GG” as she was affectionately known – would drive over at the crack of dawn to care for her grandsons the next morning.
Following a stage-four lung cancer diagnosis in 2016 (hers is a type of cancer found mostly in non-smoking Asian women), the 72-year-old made it her mission to “hang on” until her grandchildren had got through primary school.
Seven years later, after achieving her goal, there was only one thing Gill wanted to call the shots on – her death.
When the End of Life Choice Act 2019 came into effect on November 7, 2021, it opened the door for her to start having discussions about how and when
