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March 27, 2005
give me dignity
If there is anything that the Teri Schiavo case has shown us...it's that we need to be very clear in our wishes as to how we would want medical treatment to be given or not given to us in the case of being mentally or physically unable to do so ourselves.
Get your living will in order. They're very popular these days as a result of the endless media circus!
As for me, let me state clearly, if I became vegetative, massively disfigured or unable to function on my own over the long haul--put me out of my misery. Please. There is no way on earth I would ever want to be sustained unnaturally and indefinitely. I figure that if I could only live hooked up to some crazy machine then God probably wouldn't want me living anyway--it's man playing God then, not the natural forces of the world that brought me into them.
I look at it this way--if it were me in a vegetative state for 15 years--my soul would be going bonkers trying to get out and to move on to bigger and better things (heaven, reincarnation, whatever may be in store!). It would be the most awful thing ever to be trapped, watching my family go through terrible sadness and pain; wondering when I would ever just get back up and move forward; wondering why natural forces hadn't just taken the course they were supposed to.
The thing that saddens me most about the whole Schiavo case is that the poor woman is now, in the last days of her life, the center of the world's attention...in a way that I'm sure she would never ever have wanted. It's sick and disgusting and we should all be ashamed of ourselves. We're all waiting with baited breath to find out if she finally passed on. I'm sure I'm not the only one who checks the news first thing in the AM with the primary goal of finding out--did she make it one more day? Or finally, did the end of this horrible media nightmare arrive? I just want her to be at peace.
And reading about people who want to kill to help her--I just don't understand. I don't understand how the religious right seems to decide to throw the teachings of Christ right out the window when it suits them. I mean really, an eye for an eye was SO Old Testament. Christ taught us to turn the other cheek, to forgive, to love our neighbors, and to live by example. He was a pacifist--the most pure and true of them all. So much so that he, with all the power within him, didn't lift a finger against his oppressors, dying on the cross at the hands of people who in the end, he FORGAVE. Isn't that the whole point of Easter? Sometimes it seems so strange to me, how I, bordering on agnostic that I am, know so much more about the Bible than the people who profess to it being their favorite book.
It really really saddens me. The older I get, the more crazy the world seems to be.
Posted by crystallyn at March 27, 2005 09:58 AM
Comments
Don't worry I'll back Joe up in any court saying you would want the plug pulled. Just in case there is any jewelry... I'll make sure his next wife doesn't get any of that.
Posted by: paulette at March 28, 2005 01:48 PM
Woohooo! I can always count on you! ;)
Posted by: crystal at March 28, 2005 03:02 PM
Lawyers have advised me to have a Health Care Proxy and not a Living Will as the will is not as effective in MA. Here is a link to write one if you need it.
http://www.massachusetts-wills.com/health%20proxy.rtf
Posted by: Heidi at March 28, 2005 07:09 PM