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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
to a thread on a Zimbabwe and the effect of the Terri Schiavo atrocity. Thanks to TheSarce.
Zimbabwe mom: U.S. exporting euthanasia
8mm
Now that is saying something!!
Is anyone else listening to this Gambling show?
Michael just said he took Terri for an EEG and it was "completely flat" and the doctor asked him why he was "letting Terri live" since "she died four years ago."
Where the heck did this story appear from? Has anyone else ever heard this one?
Now he's threatening Bill Frist! This is amazing stuff!
Now he's railing against Father Pavone, just called him a "little man hiding behind a collar." Pavone has REALLY gotten under his skin, I love it.
Mikey's sure trying hard to convince everyone he's a hero. Or a victim. Or SOMETHING, probably doesn't matter what, as long as it's all about him. He's trying a little TOO hard. Keep talking Mikey, Felos isn't sitting beside you to nudge you in the ribs and shut you up. Just keep talking....
(Who the heck is this Gambling guy, Mikey clearly feels quite comfy with him?)
Gambling is normally conservative, but he took a position in favor of Michael on this issue. I just do not understand it.
(Shhhh, I am luring Mikey into a logic trap...Don't tell him.)
"OJ's playing golf. Michael Jackson is in Dubai"
Recently I heard a person say "The benchmark of a civilized society is the level of justice they have."
Somethings wrong with the justice in this country.
Doesn't the Bible say "Beware of lawyers" Seems they're the ones making and manipulating the laws.
As much as I dislike both of them, there's something intriguing about that combination (MS & GR) that could make for an interesting interview.
You know, I haven't read it yet and I've been intending to for a looooong time! This will be just the right opportunity for me to pick up a copy and get going. No time like the present!
Even before I took a hike he struck me as kind of a smoooosh. Little by way of political convictions and little to say that I find interesting. But wait him out and you get 15 minutes of good newscasting and 10 hours of dragon's-breath conservatism.
Normally CONSERVATIVE? Would never have guessed from the segments I just heard, I assumed he was a major moonbat. He sure used the same talking points! Very creepy.
In any case, thanks for the tip on the interview, would never have caught it otherwise.
I think T'wit is absolutely on target with his CS Lewis/moral code remarks at #1205 above.
I do not ever listen to him.
I listened to him a very long time ago. Now I never listen.
And when someone tells you not to worry any more about what happened to Terri, that what's done is done and we can all turn our attention to more recent news events, realize that they are echoing the sentiments of one Father John Paris, a medical ethicist from Holy Cross College who served as a witness for Patricia Brophy. "Some people," he is said to have commented sardonically in reference to the imminent slaying of her incapacitated husband, "are getting very, very excited about starving someone to death."
As a Catholic, I am getting pretty tired of hearing about all these supposedly Catholic priests and bishops who seem not to understand the very basics of our Faith. We must continue to pray for the Church.
"Dayside" on Tuesday (March 29, 2006) featured the parents and siblings of Terri Schiavo, who died in a Florida nursing home hospice a year ago following the removal of a feeding tube that had kept her alive nourished her for years after she suddenly collapsed at the home she shared with her husband Michael Schiavo in 1991 1990. The family was there to promote the book they have written about their fight to keep in the feeding tube, titled A Life That Matters.
Can you believe that some people think a nursing home is the same thing as a hospice facility? My guess is that they've never been to either one.
Must've been some vacation!! ;-)
As a side note, my family was recently discussing our children's high school and the various sports teams over the years that have succeeded in making it to the State playoffs for those sports. They brought up that the boys soccer team went to the championship game a few years ago and that they played at the MLS stadium here. I couldn't remember anything about this event, and searched my memory long and hard as to why this just was not clicking for me. Then we realized that it happened around the same time that I was severely injured and on big time painkillers, which pretty much kept me knocked out. It was an "oh, yeah!" moment for all of us! I nearly missed the entire Christmas season that year, too, but was fortunate enough to be weaning off the heavy duty stuff to more light-weight pain meds just a few days before Christmas Day. I hadn't been out of the house for over a month, and when we went to Christmas Eve Mass, my eyes just lit up at all the decorations!! (It was one of our best Christmases ever - something I will never forget!)
Hi. Today's errand day. This will be my only post but I'm lurking. Terri's Freepers are the greatest!
Now that Terri's gone, perhaps a few will be haunted by their memories and speak out, sort of like those who want to get something off their chests and come clean. We can only hope that they will find the courage to do so.
I have heard that story before, but Michael and his supporters are the only ones who have mentioned it.
Scary.
Maybe if Terri had been an illegal alien, she'd get medical treatment instead of death. Florida is the Starvation State. fregards, FV
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.