Photos of Terri at the memorial Mass, March 31, 2006
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
Photos of Terri at the memorial Mass, March 31, 2006
True and a good reminder. I meant that it was "on the record" in the sense of being court testimony. Michael's testimony earlier ("depressed" EEG) contradicts his recent "flat line" comment.
Above all, don't worry about it : )
Here's an article that asks would you like this to happen to you?
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2006/032006/03312006/179403
Thank you for posting the sermon from Friday's Mass. What beautiful words! It gives me hope that some good may come out of the horrific events of a year ago.
My oops. Not Father Pavone's homily but Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer's, Human Life International.
Excerpted from Homily: "Others like Nicodemus who stood up in the midst of the Sanhedrin, confronted the crowd of Pharisees and defended her honor forcefully: men like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Randall Terry, Fr. Pavone, Pat Buchanan, and my goodness, even Jesse Jackson!"
http://priestsforlife.org/blog/
BUMP
UPDATED: http://www.judgegeorgegreer.com/
Thanks.
http://www.judgegeorgegreer.com/michael_schiavo_perjury.htm
http://www.terrisfight.org/news.php?id=81
http://www.sophiescholl-derfilm.de/freiheit/
What a perfect choice of words!
Well, I did reply to the first one, but didn't know what best to say in response to the second, since I really have no way of knowing the veracity of the charges some have made against the U.S. A stated unwillingness to escallate 'badness' can encourage others to engage in it with impunity--clearly not a desirable objective, so I don't fault the U.S. for indicating preemtively that it won't do any such things. As for whether the U.S. in fact engages in such things inappropriately, I don't have enough real information to judge and I don't know that people who have access to accurate information are going to be in position to talk about it.
“Far from being an isolated instance, the attempted starvation and dehydration of Terri Schindler-Schiavo is typical of the denial of food and fluids in less publicized cases taking place daily in nursing homes and hospitals across America,” said Burke J. Balch, J.D., director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, affiliated with the National Right to Life Committee.
“For years, people who never asked to die have been quietly starved without much public attention, based on state laws and court opinions that permit third parties to make deadly decisions with little or no scrutiny or accountability,” Balch said. “The outcry over the Schindler-Schiavo case has awakened millions of Americans to the inhumanity of this practice. Now we must act to reverse this trend, and restore a presumption against starvation and dehydration.”
The proposed model law, drafted to be easily adaptable for each state, is written to be constitutional under the governing precedents of the United States Supreme Court. It would create a presumption that those incapable of making health care decisions would wish to get food and fluids so long as their provision is medically possible, would not itself hasten death, and can be digested or absorbed so as to sustain life.
The presumption would not apply if the person has specifically authorized withholding or withdrawal in an applicable legal document (advance directive).
“We must not let the horror and outrage over the attempted starvation and dehydration of Terri Schindler-Schiavo dwindle and die away before we have acted to secure protection for the thousands facing s similar fate,” said NRLC Executive Director David N. O’Steen, Ph.D.
Terri Schiavo: April 02, 2006
Depressed about what they did to Terri Schiavo?
America broke my heart last year. And I just came to doubt whether any political conversation could ever matter again. I gave everything I had in me as a blogger to trying to convince people that "where there is doubt as to what a person would want, err on the side of life" and American yawned.Many have expressed sentiments similar to the quote above. This might help: read how Bobby Schindler, Paul O'Donnell and Terri's father are responding.I entered the deepest and most long-lasting depression of my life and am still clawing my way out of it. The memory of so much effort and passion and tears in the faces of such anger and ugliness still haunts me.
| Posted by plb at April 2, 2006 07:19 PM |
Depressed about what they did to Terri Schiavo?
8mm
Terri on the road to recovery before the second stage began.
Thanks for the reference to Sophie. I found a movie reference, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426578/ and looks like there is a DVD.
The White Rose, a fitting symbol for Sophie, a fitting symbol for Terri.
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