Posted on 04/01/2005 7:47:01 AM PST by marshmallow
We who have vigorous physical and intellectual powers have much to enjoy. Severely disabled men and women may have only a few things: The voice of a good old pal. Almond-scented lotion. A favorite music CD. Warm buttery sunlight on their shoulders. The taste of strawberry jello.
Wouldn't we, who have so much to enjoy, be awfully mean to deny severely disabled men and women the few things they CAN enjoy? And death denies everything: all sensation, all pleasure, all the goodness of the body and every glimmer of the mind in this world.
May our disabled loved ones always be in the care of someone who multiples their pleasures. Someone who honors their EMBODIED spiritual nature. Someone who treasures every precious glimmer of their minds.
Mrs. Don-o
P.S. I am 24/7 caregiver for my darling 90 year old father,
who is blind and almost deaf, and whose mind is failing from vascular dementia.
We keep him well-supplied with what he likes: peanut butter and chocolate chips (eaten with a spoon), the Mozart and Bach, on tape cassette with earphones, sauerkraut-pork-and-mashed-potatoes (German comfort food), nose-to-nose contact, and hand-in-hand. He can still receive Holy Communion. If he has a little pain, he gets a little morphine. Life is good.
That's why God gives strength to the strong. So we can give sweetness to the weak.
sauerkraut-pork-and-mashed-potatoes
***
Mmmm, I love that too.
Thank you for your beautiful post. It sums up how I feel! Bless you.
It's obviously not in his character to "redeem himself a little" in anyone's eyes. He couldn't care less. I just wish this whole story had been adjudicated in bits and pieces, rather than have all these conflicting "he said, she said, she didn't say, etc. etc." gather in the last few weeks and gain critical mass only because this latest phase looked at last to be the final roundup for Terri Schiavo. We've heard SO many bad things about Michael Schiavo, that I doubt all of them could be true. If the worst of them ARE true, he should be charged with a crime, or multiple crimes, starting, I would guess, with being the chief agent and reason why his wife had a heart attack and collapsed, and went from bad to worse to worst in no time.But the other side of that story is that Terri was bulimic, and that her eating disorder brought about what became a tragic medical condition. That BOTH of these hypotheses have been put out there only testifies to the fact that there are two sides and two different agendas, rather like having two lawyers doing all the press releases for their respective audiences. My point is that all these "facts", and things like testimonies of three separate nurse's aides as to the behavior of Michael Schiavo came WAY too late to do anything more than bolster the bad opinion many already had of him. Why ALL THESE THINGS, all these conflicting histories, etc. were only trotted out at the eleventh hour is something that might be easier to understand than at first seems.
BTW, I didn't mean that MS's behavior was an ACT in the sense that he didn't really mean it. I mean that he had a role to play in this drama, and to keep himself as a counterforce to Terri's family he had to be unyielding and relentless in his opposition to them and everything they wanted. It was probably not very hard for him to do this:
there is about a decade of really bad blood between his interests and the Schindlers'.
Terri was MURDERED.
I heard on some tv show that the people in the room with Terri when she died were:
Michael Shiavo
a Shiavo brother
George Felos, lawyer
another lawyer
numerous hospice workers who "cared" for Terri
I'm sure Terri wouldn't have wanted her brother and sister and her mom and dad holding her.
This was just so wrong. Justice may never been served here on earth but justice will be served for all of us at the end.
This has been my prayer all day. Lord HAUNT this man with such guilt that he cannot sleep, walk, eat, until he confesses every single sin against the Lord. He has murdered a woman and he knows it!!
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