In the past 6 days, we have seen numerous protests in front of the place where these nasty people claiming to espouse life are championing the cause of Terry Schiavo. In the past days, we've seen people trying to sneak into the place to deliver food and water to a person, who, by the way, will never be able to chew or swallow again (hence the need for a feeding tube in the first place). A protestor yesterday was arrested and jailed with three of his four children for trying to sneak water into it.
Image courtesy of Newsday.com.
This place is a Hospice. It's not a hospital, a courthouse, the White House, a Capitol building or a governor's mansion.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Rat and I have had too much recent experience with hospices. They are quiet, somber, peaceful places, where terminally ill patients are cared for, and given a chance to spend their last living hours with the wives, husbands, sons, daughters, parents, and friends who care for them. They are quiet, sad places.
Terri Schiavo is hardly the only person dying in this place at this particular moment or at any time during Terri's stay. Hospices know no closing times. People come and go quietly, at all hours of the day and night, sons and daughters facing the realization of having to say "I love you" and "goodbye" to their mother or father for the last time. A wife giving a last loving goodbye kiss to her husband. A parent saying goodbye to a terminally ill son or daughter, taken too young. Tears are shed in abundance, and people walk in and out of the place with the weight of the world on their shoulders.
And people like these twerps, with their cute, red tape across their mouths, and the idiots who have tried to sneak into the place with water in their beyond the pale, ill-considered protests are turning the last hours for so many people into nightmares.
I can well understand that emotions have run high in this situation. I can well understand why a family could disagree about taking a loved one off of life support. I can well understand why people can sympathize with both the Schindlers or Michael Schiavo. What I can not understand is how people who are so focused on preserving one life, can be so eager to disrupt and harm other people who are dealing with the end of an entirely different life.
If this is you, or you know somebody who would protest this way in front of a hospice, I want you to think about that.
No human life exists in a vacuum. Your actions will cause ripple effects that can harm or hurt people in ways you will never know or understand. And some day, you could very easily wind up with the positions reversed, as the husband, wife, parent, or child of the next high-profile person facing a decision like this, and you might have to deal with people as callous as this. Would you want to be in that situation?
In any case, because I feel as strongly about the good that hospices do, as I do about the people who are doing this in front of a hospice right now, I urge you to make a donation of time or money to your local hospice. These people do good work, and ask for nothing more than your respect and help in doing so. They are nothing short of living angels.
Wussgawd (aka Desert Rat)
This diary has been crossposted at Desert Rat Democrat.