On Terry Schiavo

Am I the only one who felt sorry for this woman's husband. When I first started following the case I didn't know what to think. As I found out more, i was convinced that he was in it for the money and just wanted to the woman dead so that he could collect cash and move on. The more I thought about the case was the more confusing it became for me. I just want to put my philosophy out there.

A man marries a womn who becomes tragically ill. Not believing that his soul mate will be gone from him forever, he spends 5 years educating himself about how to care for her and does a great job. He conveniently decides that he will not honor her wishes of not living the life of a vegetable because he wants to believe that she'll come back to him one day. After 5 years, he realizes as doctors have been telling him that there really is no hope of her ever coming back. He must then make the decision to honor her wishes and allow her to die in as dignified a manner as possible. Once she's gone he's now going to have to rebuild his life and start a new one without his soul mate.

Enter his soul mate's parents who have decided that they are not willing to let her go because they think there's still hope. The husband must now decide if he's going to continue dishonoring his soul mate's wishes or hand her over to her parents to continue the travesty. He opts to honor her wishes. In doing so, he exhausts funds that he would have gotten. The courts become involved and the battle continues for 10 years. Having left his union spirtuall and psychologically, he starts a new family with someone else.

She is finally allowed cross over even though it is done in a most inhumane way be removing water and allowing her to dehydrate to death.

There is no happy situation in this story. Everyone believes he should have divorced his wife, moved on and given her to her parents so that they could take care of her. As I told a friend of mine when we spoke about this, when we decide to judge this husband, we should not do so from where we stand, instead we must put ourselves in his shoes and then see how we'd feel about making some of the decisions that he has had to make. I cannot make any comment about what I'd do. I learned a long time ago, that once you walk a mile in someone else's shoes the decisions you make are often not those you'd ever have thought you'd make before.