...When I sang to her, she often vocalized, in her best effort to sing along with me. She recognizes and takes great pleasure in certain singers and songs which are her favorites - most especially John Denver singing "Country Roads." She learned to love several songs I sang to her which she didn't seem to be familiar with, but others she never learned to appreciate (just not her cup of tea, obviously)...Now, whatever you think of John Denver's singing (this household is decidedly and non-negotiably split on Mr. Denver's singing), the fact that Terri has definite tastes in music ought to tell us something. Right?
Mr. Brodersen also mentions that it was his experience that Terri took a while to warm to him. That she knows who is a stranger and who isn't maybe ought to tell us something. Yes?
Not that, in the end, it should matter. I hate the idea of having some 'performance test' to sort out who lives and who dies. To me, that is evil by its very nature.
But if you think there really and truly ought to be Final Exams (literally), can't you at least see your way clear to giving a passing grade to her on this test, this time? Using this analogy, maybe all she really needs is to be sent along to another school, with new teachers? And maybe a music program? There are several speech therapists who have said they thought they could help her. They want to try. Why not let them?
Or - using another analogy - who hasn't had babysitters who worked out, and those that didn't? Maybe there's just a big, bad personality clash with the people currently in charge of her care? Or maybe they only get along with older patients? How will we ever know, if we don't get her out of this hospice and out from under Michael's thumb?
I, personally, think that if she's merely disabled no one has a right to kill her. Period.
Obviously, there are people who disagree with me. But equally obviously there are people who know her who love her just as she is. If she got better, they'd rejoice, I'm sure. But they'll love her if she stays more or less how she is. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that some people who think I'm wrong would see this added factor - this built-in home to go to - as the deciding factor. They might let her live, not because life is sacred, but because love is.
You can't go that far?
Why? Because a husband's love trumps a parent's love any day?
Sure it does. Absolutely. I agree with you there - if he's operating out of love and not selfishness, strength and not fear, loyalty and not exasperation. As the bioethicist I read the other day said, you have to be sure, when dealing with this sort of problem, that you're sure it's the patient and not yourself or the family members who are suffering. From the outside looking in, it looks like it is Michael who can't stand what Terri sees in the mirror. But that, of course, is just a guess.
What is not a guess is that Michael Schiavo did not 'remember' that Terri, the woman utterly at his mercy, 'wouldn't have wanted to live like this' until after she'd been like that for a while and he had begged in a malpractice trial for money to take care of her for the next several decades. He made a few stabs at rehab, but then, for whatever reason, he stopped. He found lovers, he fathered children, he got tied up with lawyers who make it their life's work to push death. A lot of people say he planned it this way from the beginning. I don't know. I just don't know. I prefer to hope that he built castles in the air and then he fell apart when they did.
But however he got here, he keeps ordering up death warrants for his disabled wife. Can't we agree that that's a bad thing?
Can't we agree that people who cannot run shouldn't be killed merely because they're trapped by people who can?
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