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Posted on 03/14/2006 11:28:51 AM PST by KevinNuPac
Terri's Day challenges the nation to unify
Kevin Fobbs
March 13, 2006
Terri's Day — A Celebration of the Culture of Life honoring Terri Schiavo with a day of remembrance challenges each and every one of us to stop for a moment and ask ourselves a question, do we respect ourselves, our families, our lives?
And if we are faced with the question of the possible certainty of death, does anyone truly know, or even have the faintest clue about, our wishes? That is the greatest good, the greatest legacy that Terri Schiavo's death and an annual "Terri's Day" can bring to our lives and to the celebration of the Culture of Life.
On March 18th, we as a nation will begin to grieve again, to reach into our hearts and feel with our collective national spirit what the Schindler family felt last year at this time as each moment since Terri was disconnected from the feeding lifeline, the moments crept by like hours and hours like days.
All of us have felt in some way that pain — even if it were only in the privacy of our loved one's home, hospital room, hospice or perhaps talking with an attorney and doctor attempting to make sense out of some fleeting comments made in a conversation perhaps voiced ten, twelve or even two decades earlier — not necessarily an expression of her true feeling about an end-of-life decision but merely an incidental musing in a long-forgotten side conversation.
For at least one million Americans, and quite possibly a whole lot more, this is an opportunity to voice an opinion through a pledge supporting a resolution in each state called "Terri's Day — A Celebration of the Culture of Life." Each and every person who cares that your family, your spouse, your mother, your father, your sister or brother understands with clarity what you wish the end of life for you to be, with dignity and certainty should sign the online pledge at www.kevinfobbs.com and take the additional step to sign a Living Will — or as they call it at www.terrisfight.org, the Will to Live.
Some have asked why Americans should care about an annual Terri's Day. It is quite simple, we tend to keep turning the page on the Culture of Life because we feel it does not affect us. We tend to believe that seemingly universal belief that those who are handicapped, those who are not quite living a "perfect" life or by contemporary notion "ideal" then those lives are possibly disposable, marginal, not relevant, and part of the Culture of Death which embraces a "disposable society."
But life and our values for the Culture of Life are not disposable. Think about the young people today who would rather hurt themselves or even take their own lives rather than feel "imperfect" or the elderly person whose family is told by an insensitive health care professional while the stricken person struggles to cling to life, "she would be better off in another place," — just let her die, disconnect her from life, because her quality of life is not up to "contemporary standards. "
Why does celebrating the Culture of Life in Michigan become so essential for all of us in America? It is important for several reasons. Dr. Jack Kervorkian, also known as "Doctor Death" helped launch first in Michigan and then the nation the notion of the death culture. Secondly, and equally as important, at the May 12 event — just two days before Mother's Day — there will also be a "Mary's Moms" celebration of those women and mothers who have met challenges in standing up for some aspect of the Culture of Life.
This past weekend I sat at my cousin's funeral — or going home celebration, which more accurately describes it — thinking about the dearly departed and how she packed so much caring for others into her life even as she struggled with illness and advancing age. She was a wonderful woman who had lived through many, many challenges in her life, but in her 73 years she had met these challenges with dignity and had conveyed to her family when would be the right time to allow her to pass away.
Her daughter, who is a minister, spoke to the packed church about the times when, with all of her pain and then a stroke, the doctors had informed them that perhaps it was better to let her go. Yet that was three years ago that that occurred, and if the family had listened to the doctors and refused to see how she fought back and not only recovered but went back to volunteering at the church to feed and clothe the homeless. The medical professionals didn't care about an elderly lady who was on dialysis, but the family did and they knew better. Patricia lived three more years — years her extensive extended family considered "a gift from God."
So isn't part of the lesson of Terri's legacy and Terri's Day for families and loved ones to have a meaningful conversation with their family and to have the written document on hand as well that conveys the wishes clearly and concisely? You betcha.
As I sat in the church I thought of all of the families across the nation and the world who were sitting at their loved one's bedsides — or even standing outside of a hospital emergency room — overwhelmed with emotion, torn by what may be days of conflicting anguished decisions. I thought again of how out of death we may have the certainty of life. Terri's death reminded the nation that yes a state can and will starve you to death, and your family may be rendered helpless as you watch your loved one's precious life forces drain slowly away.
By signing the online pledge at www.kevinfobbs.com or going to www.terrisfight.org, you can learn about how to encourage your state legislature to establish March 31st as an official Terri's Day. Hold a Culture of Life Home Party or meet-and-greet to sign pledges, share ideas and support The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation as well as Culture of Life activities and events in your community or around the nation. Between now and March 31st you can make a dramatic difference for yourself, your family and for the nation. Stand up for the Culture of Life because one person, one life, one family can and does make a difference in America. Make the difference and be the difference today. America...The countdown for the Culture of Life has begun.
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Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is a regular contributing columnist for the Detroit News. He is also the daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show online at www.wdtkam.com daily 2-3 p.m., and call in toll-free nationwide to make your opinion count at 800-923-WDTK(9385) © Copyright 2006 by Kevin Fobbs http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/fobbs/060313
Haleigh Poutre's plight has attracted much needed attention. Thanks to Wendy Murphy, Michelle Malkin, and unsung others who kept this poor kid in the limelight so she couldn't be sacrificed at the altar of evil.
Of all the questions Gov. Mitt Romney’s panel on the Haleigh Poutre child abuse case raises, among the most disturbing is this: Why are so many children dying in Western Massachusetts?
In three of the past five years, Western Massachusetts led the state in child fatalities. And although the report the panel released last week offers no definitive answer, it points to deficiencies in the child-welfare system that could be contributing factors.
Panel: Western Mass. sees more kid deaths
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Talk about acrimony. I don't think some of those posters like anyone.
Thank you. Didn't hear a word of it. Maybe I was on vacation.
This Terri Schiavo murder being still a COLD CASE FILE from the beginning, with the popularity of such topics these days, it is ideal opportunity for some courageous investigators. They could lay out the most incredible Cold Case anyone can remember.
One day, soon, maybe a courageous soul will step forward and carry this to justice.
Wouldn't you just KNOW it would be a pitch for more social workers. It never occurs to them that these DSS "resident" facilities for kids are little more than internment camps. The kids get starved for love and attention and schooling and moral instruction from their parents or foster parents. Social workers can't satisfy those needs. No wonder some of the little ones lose hope, waste away and die.
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We have watched many of our son's roommates die just that way, before we broke him free from any of their "help". Little handicapped children like cut flowers just fade and die without the love parents can bring.
In fairness, we have come across fine nurses who lay their hearts on the line for these hapless kids, but the atmosphere gets to the kids anyway. Even watering cut flowers is not enough. Eventually they wilt.
It reminds me of our education/indoctrination system bolstered by liberal logic. We see the system failing to produce quality education. The liberal answer is to throw money at it. When that fails, the liberal answer is to throw even more money at it. The more it fails, the more liberals are convinced it just needs more money.
It's instructive to mention this quote about Nancy Cruzan's killing...
"[Nancy Cruzan, three days before her death from starvation] turned and looked at me and stared at me with a panicky look, sweating profusely, and the thought I had was, she was thinking, ‘Oh, here’s a policeman, he’ll help me.’ But we weren’t allowed to do that,"...Doug Seneker (who was "guarding" the dying woman)I wonder if Nancy's father saw the same look on Nancy's face.
Here is a thread that suggests dark roots of media and the death culture.
Liberal Democrat's Satanic Overlord
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It painfully reminds me of the policeman who witnessed Terri's panic when they pulled her tubes. Likewise he was assigned to be at her side, to protect her from anyone trying to save her.
Sadly, he developed an immediate case of amnesia immediately thereafter. I wonder how he lives with it.
He must be suffering from IDS, Intention Deficit Syndrome.
http://www.wabcradio.com/default.asp
You can listen live if you have a real one player.
I pray that people who witnessed such things will someday have enough courage to come forward.
What is a job worth?
Maybe their lives were threatened. Who knows what evil does.
Yes, and God bless them all. It takes a special kind of love to be a nurse. My daughter spent a summer doing entry-level nursing drudgery and it changed her life. She switched her major to special education, even though it meant returning to the university for a fifth year. She also did a tour in the Peace Corps (South America) teaching teachers down there the basics of special ed.
>> ...but the atmosphere gets to the kids anyway. Even watering cut flowers is not enough. Eventually they wilt.
Well said, and unfortunately, only too true. The same sense of being lost, alone, without hope, abandoned, affects people of all ages, and sometimes even the sturdiest bodies wither away like the cut flowers.
I turned off John Gambling permanently last year when he sided against Terri. He had the basic facts wrong and got positively huffy about his mistaken views. I not only avoid him, I switch to a different radio station during his hours and sometimes I don't come back. Message to WABC: Gambling drives this listener to a rival station.
Me too. Policemen. Nurses who were silenced. Perhaps even bookkeepers or clerks who saw hidden medical and financial statements. Testimony from people who were close to Terri in some way, in a position to observe, could be extremely damning to the murderer.
May it haunt him every moment until his heart softens.
May the pumpkin seed of happiness grow great in TC's heinie.
I think better of Ron Kuby than of Gambling.
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