Absolutely right. I've already told my kids to keep me hooked up as long as possible. If I'm "unconscious", then I'll be in my one little fantasy world where I spend most of my time anyway. If I'm conscious and in pain, I understand, I think, the merit in suffering and I wouldn't want anyone to deny me that. And if, as you say, there is one person left willing to love and be loved in return, then my life will serve an obvious purpose. And even if it isn't obvious, the sanctity, the gift of human life itself is far too precious to snuff. (Of course my children, being related to their father, promptly replied, "What, Dad? Can't hear you! You want us to pull the plug, right?")
Robert N.G. | Homepage | 03.31.05 - 3:34 pm | #

thank you Dawn, that was lovely.
Cathy | 03.31.05 - 3:45 pm | #

Then you should still make a living will...but specify that you not have feeding tubes or heroic measures withdrawn. A living will (or an even stronger Durable Medical Power of Attorney given to someone you love and trust) doesn't necessarily have to be used to pull the plug.
Vidiot | Homepage | 03.31.05 - 4:02 pm | #

I don't get this mania for living wills - people talk as if they will solve all problems. They even say that none of this would have happened if only Terri had had a living will - as if this is all somehow HER fault. It seems to me that people fixate on the word "living" and forget the second word - "will". As in 'LAST Will and Testament'. A Will is what dead people have. Not the living. I don't need a "will" to decide what to make for supper tonight - since I'm alive, I just do it. A living will is a way of making a living person an honorary dead person - we're being invited to make advance arrangements for a neat and tidy transition into the company of the Dead. Anyone who thinks that a living will could be used to keep them alive is deluding themselves. It's only purpose is to speed one's departure. As Mark Steyn wrote, "Where do you go to get a living-will kit saying that in the event of a hideous accident I don't want to be put to death by a Florida judge or the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals? And, if you had such a living will, would any U.S. court recognize it?" Can anyone present any cases where this has happened? I doubt it.
Wanda | 03.31.05 - 4:17 pm | #

Thanks for reminding us of the importance of love, peace, and joy. You are right, Terri's chief value wasn't in what she taught us, but merely in the fact that she felt love, peace, and joy, as was evidenced by her videos. It isn't so much about what we do, but who we are. Our value doesn't lie in what we do, but in who we are, i.e. those things that make us human, the ability to love, hope, believe, trust . . .
Camila | Homepage | 03.31.05 - 4:21 pm | #

To Wanda -
In a living will you say if you want to be kept on life support, or taken off. It is not merely a way to speed up the dying process, but it says what your "will" is concerning life support and feeding tubes, etc. A Last Will and Testiment says what your wishes are for after your death. A living will says what you wishes are if you are alive, but not able to communicate those wishes.
Camila | Homepage | 03.31.05 - 4:51 pm | #

I want to be kept alive, at whatever cost, whatever pain and expense the Lord deals out. Why? Because i believe in Miracles.

Why would i ask my wife to give up her belief in miracles? As long as she does believe that God can work miracles, then i want her to continue praying for one for me. By asking her to "put me down", i contribute to her disbelief. I do not want to go to my grave knowing that i caused my wife to lose faith in God's almighty power

There, that's my living will. Keep me on the wire please, because i will NEVER stop believing.
Marty | 03.31.05 - 8:01 pm | #

A living will is a way of making a living person an honorary dead person - we're being invited to make advance arrangements for a neat and tidy transition into the company of the Dead.

Wow! Well said!

That's why some disability-rights activists and prolife activists have developed the Will to Live.
Christina | Homepage | 03.31.05 - 8:13 pm | #

He is crying. He is saying, through his sobs, that people seem to think that in order to deserve to live, a quadriplegic has to be a Stephen Hawking, a Superman. Yet, he says, Terri Schiavo, just by being able to move a little—just by smiling—made so many people happy.


I remember when I first went to work at an institution for the developmentally disabled. I'd never really interacted with profoundly disabled folks before. And it took a while to get past the visual shock of the degree of disability.

But after I adjusted, a whole new world opened up to me. These were amazing people. One home had a dozen women who were unable to do anything for themselves. I had to reposition them at night, change their incontenent briefs. I loved my nights on that home. The small, quiet interactions with these women in the still of the night was profoundly moving. One woman had the most amazing smile. I'd always poke my head back into her room and ask for one more smila. She'd give me that beaming, radiant blessing and I'd walk away on clouds.

Everybody loses when we dismiss these folks. They lose out on the chances to be in the community among others, and we lose the blessing of their presence.
Christina | Homepage | 03.31.05 - 8:21 pm | #

In church on Good Friday I sat near a disabled parishioner, nearing 50 years old, who has always been brought to church by his parents. He can't have a whole lot of cerebral cortex, has always been in a wheelchair, makes only the most perfunctory grunts. During the reading of the Passion, when the death of the Lord was announced, he leaned forward in his wheelchair and solemnly touched the pew in front of him. When the priest stood up, he leaned back. There was no one to coach him. At communion time, though he has trouble swallowing, he took the communion host on his tongue with radiant joy and nearly leaped out of his chair, the broadest smile I've ever seen.

God communicates with him. He communicates with all of us. God bless those with the simplicity of heart to listen.
Robert N.G. | Homepage | 03.31.05 - 8:45 pm | #

I still maintain that trusting in a living will to save one from an unwanted death is futile. If you want to arrange your death ahead of time, they're fine. For anything else, they're useless. Mark Steyn's quote is still pertinent: how would you devise a living will that would allow you to escape what happened to Terri Schiavo? Especially now that her precedent is in place? Marty's living will quoted above is a good example: how could such a declaration be enforced if doctors or state officials opposed it? Here are their arguments: 'What sort of person would make such a living will? Only one sort: the sort of person who opposed Terri Schiavo's forced death. And we know what sort THAT is - people deluded by religious mysticism, who rebel against the sensible and wholesome arguments of the law and the courts. We saw them, praying outside that hospice. And we showed them what we think of their values and approach to life. Clearly, such a living will is the product of a person who is incapable of properly evaluating the complex realities at stake, and so it may be safely set aside." I predict we will see such things happen within 5 years.
Wanda | 03.31.05 - 10:23 pm | #

Terri Schiavo reportly told her brother-in-law and her husband that she would not want to be kept alive like that.

Judge Greer ruled that that testimony was more credible than the testimony of her parents. (Her parents, for example, said the comment occured when Schiavo was 18 or 19, because of an event that happened when Schiavo was much younger.)

The judge did what he could to discover Terri Schiavo's opinions. He had no other means. He may have been wildly wrong. But he thought, the courts thought, that pulling the feeding tube was what Terri Schiavo would have wished. To conclude that this case leads to people having their feeding tubes pulled despite an expressed preference for something else is not credible.

If you want to be concerned about precedents, there's the case of Sun Hudson. The five-month old baby was on a ventilator, and the doctors said he had no chance, and so against the will of his mother, they removed him from life support because his mother could not pay.
Kris | Homepage | 03.31.05 - 10:34 pm | #

And then there's the case of Marjorie Nighbert. She was able to beg and plead for food, but the judge said that because she was legally incompetent, what mattered was that some of her comments before her stroke could have been interpreted as not wanting a feeding tube.
Mary | 03.31.05 - 10:51 pm | #

Many things have happened in the last 2 weeks that I would have termed "not credible", and yet here we are. If a court can argue itself into finding an excuse to kill a woman who has not asked to be killed, it can find arguments to disregard inconvenient requests for life. Perfectly logical arguments. As someone icily put it, Michael Shiavo had the law and the facts on his side to help him put his wife out of the way. Of course, human beings manufacture the law, and can decide which facts are important enough to count, so that puts the power on the side of the courts. It's a fearful thing, but we have to understand what is happening, and not try to evade the knowledge.
Wanda | 03.31.05 - 10:51 pm | #

Some beautiful comments here--I was especially touched by Christina's second one and Maclin's.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 03.31.05 - 11:16 pm | #

"But regardless of what happens, we can be sure that, even in Heaven, we will never again have the opportunity to experience the joys particular to this life?the ones that God enables us to give and receive each day, here and now."

I hope you're wrong, Dawn. Every person has joys they don't experience in this life.

It's my deepest hope that the joy in Heaven is infinite and renders what we experience (or don't experience) here on earth meaningless.

It would be a sad fate to end up in a Heaven unfulfilling enough to make you still have regrets about missed opportunities on earth.

Better than the alternative, true. But I hope Heaven is more than just that.
P.R. | 04.01.05 - 3:26 am | #

P.R., who said anything about regetting missed opportunities? I didn't say I'd regret them if I make it to Heaven--there are no tears up there. But saying there are better things to come can't negate the fact that God wants us to deeply appreciate the blessings He gives us in the here and now, as long as we are alive.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 04.01.05 - 3:38 am | #

Maybe it's too early to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway -- I think someone should start the cause for Terri Schindler's (not Schiavo; that was her murderer's name) canonization as a martyr.

Terri Schindler was killed, just like No. 16670 from odium fidei, "hatred of the faith." Can anyone doubt that?

What do you think?
Patrick McGrath | 04.01.05 - 9:13 am | #

Re Patrick's comment--as of yet, no saint has a feast day on March 31.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 04.01.05 - 9:22 am | #

One irony I've not yet read anyone mention is that a woman was deliberately starved to death in a country so overstuffed with plenty and so abandoned to gluttony that even our children are staggering under their own obesity. It seems that even the things we boast about - and this is one of our favourite boasts, that WE have unlocked the secret to wealth and plenty, unlike those miserable paupers the rest of the world over - God is turning to reproach.
Wanda | 04.01.05 - 10:07 am | #

Dawn, you write, "if I make it to Heaven." Why wouldn't you?
Michael Bates | Homepage | 04.01.05 - 11:01 am | #

To clarify, that was meant as a theological question, not a personal question.
Michael Bates | Homepage | 04.01.05 - 11:30 am | #

Michael Bates, all of us hope to persevere unto the end by God's grace. But it would be a sin of pride to presume that we will. I think Dawn was implicitly rejecting the heresy of "once saved, always saved", a.k.a "dunk 'em and forget 'em".
craig | 04.01.05 - 12:12 pm | #

To me all this madness basicly comes down to one simple thing: in the West we just had the two materially most spoiled generations in the history of the world.In Judeo-Christian history the essence of civilisation was to uphold the priority of the spiritual values of life and love above the material values of comfort and convenience.But we got spoiled,we got too much attached to material comfort and so we inverted the true order of values.All the madness of abortion on demand,euthanasia,gay marriage,prostitution as normal labor, it comes all down to this.Polical correctness means only:"I-for example this newsoutlet- will prioritize my convenience above all socalled spiritual values.Therefore I judge case for case what for me is most prudent to say,and I will make this prudence my policy of behavior".So also the present PC-mentality basicly comes down to the same.It is sad,but we humans just not seem to be capable to get rich and not nasty and spoiled.And now we have become nasty and spoiled of course we judge ourselves not at all like that.Far from that!On the contrary:we find ourselves 'relaxed' and 'non-fundamentalist' and we decry everyone who calls us spoiled and inverted in values 'a religious nutcase'.So it is all very simple.Things will change, but only after God will once again take away the detrimental surplus of cookies.
Jan Gommers | 04.01.05 - 1:40 pm | #

Jan - you raise a superb, if disturbing, question.

Through our plenty, we have done a great deal of good in our country and the world. Even the poor among us are among the richest in the world. Our agriculture also helps to feed many others across the world (though there is still more work to do there). And yet this means to do good has been exploited and corrupted, and rebounded to our detriment.

So - in order to survive as a civilization at all, must we lose much of the power we have to do good in the world?

Second toughie - are spritual good and temporal good in tension; beyond a certain point, in conflict?
Nightfly | Homepage | 04.01.05 - 2:20 pm | #

Dawn -
You said 'Re Patrick's comment--as of yet, no saint has a feast day on March 31.'

But...

Yesterday, the day of Terri's martyrdom, was March 18 according to the traditional Orthodox church calendar (Julian, as opposed to Gregorian). Of great importance to the English speaking Church is the martyrdom on this day in 979 of St. Edward, King of England (especially in light of its political motivation; see http://www.saintedwardbrotherhoo...rg/edward.html) .

Other saints celebrated this day by the whole Church before the Great Schism of 1054 are St. Cyril, archbishop of Jerusalem (386), St. Ananias, presbyter and monk of the Euphrates, Martyrs Trophimus and Eucarpus of Nicomedia (300), St. Tetricus, bishop of Langres in Gaul (572-573), and St. Daniel, monk of Egypt (6th cen.).

Also of interest to you might be, although definitely post-schism, is the commemoration on this day of St. Maria Skobstova, the nun who suffered at Ravensbruck in 1945. She was sent there for helping the Jews in occupied Paris and died having taken the place of a Jewish prisoner who was to have been sent to the gas chamber. (Her son, and her spiritual father, who both shared her work, died in Buchenwald in 1943.)

Listed for March 31 (if following the Gregorian calendar) are St Hypatius the Wonderworker, bishop of Gangra (ca. 360), Righteous Joseph the Fair, son of Jacob (ca. 1700 BC), St. Acacius the Confessor, bishop of Antioch in Pisidia (251), St. Apollonius, ascetic of the Thebaid (395), Martyrs
Abdas the Bishop and Benjamin the Deacon, of Persia (ca. 424), St. Hypatius, abbot of Rufinus in Chalcedon (446), and St. Blaise of Amorium and Mt. Athos (ca. 908 ).

Just as Terri was not truly alone when she died, her memory will be celebrated, by God's mercy and providence, in the company of His saints.
Anonymous | 04.01.05 - 5:14 pm | #

To Nightfly: We are only human,we can only do our best.But we can learn from our own personal history and from general history.As humans we are both morally and bodily fragile.And this is the cause of all our tragic.True tragic means that our purposes turn against themselves.We want our kids to be affluent only to see that they get spoiled.This will remain so untill we have become spiritually and bodily completely sound.That is untill we are angels in Heaven.Angels cannot be corrupted by material abundance,only we can.And we have to live and learn to deal with it.It means only that true heaven can never be at earth.There will always be the contradictions caused by our spiritual and bodily fragility.But God doesn't ask from us the impossible:to create a perfect world.He only asks each of us to try in an honest way,leaving the ultimate government to Him.We can't do anything else.The black horrors of the 20th century (Hitler,Stalin etc) are caused by the thought that we ourselves can and must take over this ultimate government.Bu we cannot,we must not and we may not do this.It leads only to unspeakable horror. So is the spiritual good ad odds with the temporal good?Yes,but only in so far as humans are still spiritual unsound.We have good AND bad in us and therefore we cannot deal with the spiritual and temporal in a completely sound, noncontradictory
way.And:didn't we do a great deal of good with our wealth?Yes,we did,but we also promoted corruption.But the ones that tried to help in a honest way did first and foremost good to their own souls.Only of THIS effect of your own honest trying you can be sure.All other effects are unsure.You can only hope that your own wellintentioned actions are truely beneficial to others,but you can never be sure.All help,all assistance can be misused for immoral purposes.The only thing you know in the end is that you can say to yourself and to everybody else,including God,:"I tried,I honestly tried".That seems not much,but it is exactly this deepfelt answer that is the essence of your soul,the one thing you won't loose when you die biologically.The one thing that is above all earthly corruption and contradiction,quite rightly described as the spark from Heaven.We are only asked to enforce this,our own spark,no more.Heaven itself will do the rest.
Jan Gommers | 04.01.05 - 6:07 pm | #