Let Her Go

Terri Schiavo has been on my mind all week, of course. I mean, how can you escape it? Yesterday as I listened to some talk show, where people kept saying how selfish the husband is and how cruel it is to let her starve to death, I couldn’t help thinking of my Dad. He died of cancer, but at the end, after hospice came in and a stroke destroyed his ability to eat or drink, he didn’t have any food or water until he died.

At the time, that really bothered me. I mean, it seemed an uncomfortable way to go, dehydrating to death. But I think more people die that way than we realize. Hospice considers giving fluids through an IV to be a life-saving measure, and they don’t do it. It would have just prolonged my Dad’s suffering. But it’s hard to watch.

At first I thought Terri’s husband was wrong, but now, I've come full circle. The law’s on his side. He did try to help her for the first five years or more. Her parents sued him for half of the medical malpractice suit that Terri and he received, and I don’t see why they felt entitled to that. It seems like her parents have put him through the ringer, not the other way around.

No one disputes the fact that this woman’s cortex is liquefied. No one, that I know of, has recovered from a permanent vegetative state. It just seems to me that her husband may be right after all. It’s time to let her go, and there is nothing immoral about it.

Now I’m just praying that God takes her quickly, and helps her parents move on.