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
"We Catholics pray for the dead. I will continue to pray for Terri, a Catholic who graduated from the Catholic Schools as did I. In fact, she graduated from the same CAtholic School diocese from which I graduated."
Obviously I am not a Catholic and don't want a mud slinging contest on this thread, however I alert you to what the Bible states:
1Cor.5:3
[3] For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed,
2Cor.5:8
[8] We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
I have confidence in what the approved books of the Bible state than those that contradict it.
Yes. And the next afternoon, they would have chopped up her body for organs for transplanting. Michael Schiavo, poor fellow, would not have had time for the teensiest little fraudulent malpractice suit.
Good for you. I can't recite all 10 without looking.
Let me guess that members of the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club are either 1) incredibly stupid and immoral, or 2), so young that they can't imagine being put to death the way Terri was. Give them time and a serious disability -- they'll learn.
Incidentally, Ben Franklin said, "Experience keeps a dear [expensive] school, but fools will learn in no other."
Let me translate. If these Tiger Bay idiots won't listen to their minds and hearts, or learn from the experience of others, or obey their conscience, they will learn the lesson of Terri's murder the hard way -- by living it themselves.
Terri was a Catholic who believed in praying for the dead as I and most Catholics do. Thus, in her honor, I will continue to pray in the Catholic tradition for BOTH Terri and her family as our faith teaches and permits us to do.
I noticed other stories out there saying 'brain damaged' now also. Do you think they are trying to get it right, or is the media simply rephrasing it now (when it gets the most attention on the anniversary) to get it in peoples minds that killing brain damaged people will be acceptable in the future?
If the media would honestly investigate what happened down there, I would rule out the rephrasing scenario, but not until then.
So many liars and so many lies in Schiavo-Gate.
ggreer@co.pinellas.fl.us.
Because it's the weekend, maybe we could email the most reversed judge in Amerika except re: Terri.
Stuff the evil doer's mailbox.
Someday the force shield that protects this bum George Greer will be off.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1595698/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1536343/posts
I wonder if the restaurant had anything to do with the original assault back in 1990. Maybe they helped HINO try to whack her.
I don't get why so called conservative freepers are on the same side as the ACLU re: Terri. How blind can they be? As blind as J. Greer I guess.
Judge Greer violated judicial canon 2 because the ACLU was at the counsel table with Michael Schiavo's attorney George Felos. By accepting an award from the ACLU, Greer is in receipt of an honor from a special interest.
It would take the FBI to list and bifurcate all the laws that Judge Greer violated and continues to violate. The ACLU helped kill Terri in Greer's courtroom and then they honor him. AGAINST THE JUDICIAL CANONS but in Florida, nobody's in charge, not even Jebbie.
I watched Greer on c-span when he spoke at the Broward Cty Bar Assn. In the uncut version, his definition of accountability started out rather discombulated. I tuned him out after that. He's hard to stomach.
discombobulated. Greerspeech. Orwellian.
Maybe someday he will get a chance to explain it a grand jury, and I hope you are on it FV!
"Somebody paid him REAL GOOD - real good to make sure Terri would die last year."
That's the feeling I get too! He held onto Terri's case with steel-like fingers knowing the outcome all the time. Like a puppet master pulling the strings.
Is Agostino's on Feather Sound? Or was it a different restaurant? I've always thought that something was very weird about Michael's boss at the time being a lawyer, who incidentally advised him to get the Schindlers to hand over all decisions to Michael the day after she collapsed. It was something like that wasn't it? What was the name of his lawyer early on, Glenn Woodworth? I could have some of this confused. I don't have my files right in front of me, but this is how I'm remembering it at the moment. I'll have to do some reviewing.
I tried to read it just now, but I can't. My eyes have just welled up with tears again. I'll be back later. :-(
Terri and HINO lived out that way too, on the approach to Tampa.
Doesn't seem likely to me. Think about aggressive young male hormones; think about a lazy ne'er-do-well who couldn't hold a job. I figure MS spent his evening shift getting madder and madder about Terri spending the $80 getting her hair done. He'd rationalize that that was his money -- why, it was her fault he had to work late! The rhymes-with-rich was defying him! He must have gone home in a cold rage. May have stopped for a few drinks first; the timing is uncertain.
Terri never screamed. I don't suppose she got a chance to.
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