Saturday, March 26, 2005
"I want to live"
Considering the plight of Terry Schiavo
FOR THE RECORD: I don't care what any ex-wives or future wives may say, I WANT TO LIVE... no matter what it takes and no matter how terrible my life may be deemed by others.
Here's why (and it has nothing to do with selfishness or wanting to be a burden on others).
I want to live because God may be teaching me something while I am still alive - or I may be learning something - about myself and suffering, or the people around me, or humanity overall, or the triumph of the spirit in the darkest moments, or who knows what.
And since God has given me life - and given physicians the means to preserve life - I don't think it is my right or place to take that life away... or to allow that life to dissolve simply because it might be an escape from that which is not what I or others might have wanted in the first place.
As long as my heart is beating, it is because God has willed it.
And who am I to second guess His will?
WTSjr
My friend, author-poet Kay Day, e-mails me from Jacksonville:
"...If I'm living, I'll be certain your wishes are followed. I feel the same way. I've expressed my feelings to my family and written them into my will.
What the medical establishment and Schaivo's estranged husband are doing is murder.
I cannot reconcile the fact they are removing her feeding tube. But to withhold water from a dying woman is barbaric. If she were from a foreign country, the popular press would be up in arms.
In my opinion, her husband has abandoned her, having fathered children by another woman. He should have done the honorable thing and divorced her long ago. He is, in a moral sense, a bigamist.
I do not believe the polls accurate. I have found only one person, of many with whom I've spoken, who believes Terry Schiavo should be euthanized. That's what the establishment is doing.
It speaks to the heart of a judicial system that lacks compassion, except for the very wealthy."
# posted by W. Thomas Smith, Jr. @ 8:02 AM 
