Terri Schiavo's brother Bob Schindler Jr., gets an Easter flower from a friend outsdie the Woodside Hospice Sunday morning March 27, 2005 (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
Death doesn't become her
by Judi McLeod
Sunday, March 27, 2005
It was supposed to be his finest hour. Just hours before Judge George Greer had turned down the 11th hour pleas of the Schindler family and now Schindler lawyers were admitting that they had run out of court appeals.
The sweet smell of victory overpowered the odour of Easter lilies. It was George Felos The Conqueror’s made-for-television shining moment. In terms of media attention, surpassing even O.J.’s Dream Team.
With cameras recording, George Felos took careful steady aim-- and shot himself in both left feet.
Academe teaches graduates to be gracious in victory, that it is not nice to gloat and to never kick the underdog when it’s down.
Lessons all lost on Mrs. Felos’ little boy George, who took the low road.
Within the first minutes of his self-aggrandizing media conference, he came on like the power drunk tinpot dictator, proclaiming that Terri, a Catholic, wouldn’t be having her Easter Eve Holy Communion.
Why this televised deathbed denial?
As far as Felos was concerned, she already had it on March 18. Terri was given Communion through her feeding tube before it was detached.
The dying woman, however will be "allowed" to receive the Sacrament one more time. At the time of death, Catholics are administered Extreme Unction. But in Terri’s case not by the Catholic priest who ministered to her for more than four years, but by the chaplain at the hospice that will be her death house.
That’s the decree of Dying with Dignity-crusader George Felos.
By the way, we’re perhaps overreacting, because Felos said death for Terri is not imminent. According to the voluble Felos, Terri could be around longer than we think.
How any self-respecting attorney could stand on national television and expect folk to believe someone starved of food and water could last much longer is breathtaking in its sheer audacity.
Interesting how Felos could possibly know how long Terri would endure.
Surely, it has nothing to do with his having served on the board of directors of the hospice where Terri is wasting away?
Sounding like the title of the movie, Death Becomes Her, Michael Schiavo’s favourite lawyer also pooh-poohed all this talk about Terri looking gruesome.
There is no bleeding nose, sunken eyes or flaking skin. People under the control of the Dying with Dignity gang always look good.
In fact, Felos told reporters he’d "never seen such a look of peace and beauty upon her".
Coolly, he spoke of cremation. His client Michael Schiavo is insisting that immediately upon her death, Terri will be cremated.
Felos had the colossal nerve to advise the great unwashed to reflect upon how life on earth does not last.
This peon of the politically correct, whose conversation is laced with words like "inappropriate" and who would lecture all about "dying with dignity", has already snatched the laurel wreath.
It wasn’t the actual act of denying Terri Schiavo Holy Communion, but his apparent gesture of dismissing the Sacrament as something not sacrosanct that insulted Catholics at their holiest time of the year.
Like so many crusaders of the politically correct, the boorish George Felos is a hypocrite.
Having seized the moral high ground to lecture the rest of us, and seeming to have won the day for the Death Culture, Felos won’t be stepping down from the podium Michael Schiavo raised for him anytime soon.
http://www.torontofreepress.com/2005/edesk032705.htm
"The family has suggested that an autopsy might confirm their claims that Michael Schiavo abused his wife before her collapse, an accusation he has repeatedly denied. It was not clear whether any autopsy would be performed, and the Pinellas County Medical Examiner's Office did not return calls seeking clarification. "
http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1010280&tw=wn_wire_story
Terri Schiavo's brother Bob Schindler Jr., gets an Easter flower from a friend outsdie the Woodside Hospice Sunday morning March 27, 2005 (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)