Funerals are for the living
Bookworm on Aug 23 2009 at 7:06 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
There is a debate going on about the content of the “Your Life/Your Choices” book the VA prepared for vets. It’s main goal is to encourage vets to draft living wills. Some consider it a death book; some consider it a useful tool for helping people make end of life decisions. I think the issue is much more nuanced than the book itself. Two things are really going on here. The first thing is the timing of the book into veterans’ lives.
As Chuck points out, one of the byproducts of being ill or injured is a very deep depression. If I were suffering from that type of situational depression, and someone gave me the book at that precise time, my starting point in answering the check list on page 21 of the booklet would be that a lot of things that are not painful or life threatening nevertheless fall into the “life is not worth living” category. Thus, sitting here, right now, in the pink (or at least pinkish) of health, I would never say that not being able to walk, but just being able to get around in a wheelchair falls into the life not worth living category. (That, incidentally, is question “a” on the check list.) However, casting my mind back to a period of deep depression following a major surgery, I know that I would have instantly answered that life in a wheelchair was unbearable. The same goes for item “r” which is “I cannot seem to ‘shake the blues.’” Intractable blues, are, of course, depression. The checklist implies that depression is a ground for euthanasia, rather than psychiatric treatment, the passage of time and, possibly, medicine.
It matters very much, therefore, whether the book is given to people when they are optimistic and planning a long life, or when they are depressed by illness or injury, and feeling badly beaten down by life. If the VA is handing this book out to wounded vets, I agree that it is subtly encouraging them to check out of life for conditions that, ultimately, are tolerable or treatable. In that case, it is definitely a death book. However, if this is just one of the routine pamphlets the VA makes available to service people as they make plans for their future, it’s no worse than any other book I’ve seen on the topic, whether from a doctor’s office or an estate planning lawyer.
The second issue is something I’ve thought about a lot since the Terri Schiavo case. Hers was the classic example of someone who didn’t make any plans for a catastrophic brain injury that left her unable to speak for herself — or even to think. Her parents wanted her to live; her husband wanted her to die. Her vote, since unexpressed, didn’t matter. At the time, I wrote that the Terri Schiavo who once was no longer existed and that the Terri Schiavo at the center of the storm, if she had a consciousness, might have an entirely different opinion on the matter than when she was healthy. I’ve said more than once that I’ve known people (my father among them) who always said they’d lie down and die, or commit suicide, if they got terribly sick but who, when the moment came, discovered an entirely unexpected urge to live. What separated my father and the others I’ve known from Schiavo is that the former retained their ability to speak for themselves — they could still articulate their present needs.
Living wills are really for those whose brains aren’t functioning any more at any level. And as to those people, since they’ve already checked out, I think it ought to be up to the living to make the decision. Even if I’ve said I don’t want to “live” as a vegetable (meaning without any brain function), once my brain has checked out, I no longer have an awareness of my status. The ones who are aware — my family — ought to be the ones calling the shots, since they’re the ones feeling the effects of my physical condition. I’m beyond pain and humiliation. They’re not. Now, if there’s a Schiavo situation, with feuding viewpoints, it’s very helpful if I’ve given some sort of an indication of my wants so that I can be my own tie breaker. Otherwise, though, they matter, not I.
That point of view explains my post title. Funerals honor the dead but they comfort the living. To be honest, even if my mother left a request that her funeral be a quiet affair, if my sister and I wanted to have a funeral that was a huge event, with all her friends and a horse drawn carriage, I’d go with the desires of the living, not the wishes of the dead. My sister and I would be the ones left to console ourselves for her passing. If a quiet affair dictated from beyond the grave didn’t cut the mustard for us emotionally, and if a wingding blow-out did, I think we count more than my mother’s wishes.
I should add as a caveat here that nothing I’ve said should be construed to mean I want to do away with Wills. Although those express a dead person’s wishes, societal chaos would ensue if wills were taken away. The only substitution would be government-mandated inheritance, which is a situation I’m not willing to countenance.
With that thought in mind, let me drag myself back to the VA’s book. The book is peculiar to me in that it doesn’t focus solely on situations in which someone’s brain has turned into mush and the person is unable to communicate or think. Instead, it seems to focus a bit too much on situations in which people are simply limited. And while it’s true that those people, if they can still communicate, can turn their back on their earlier wishes to end it all under those circumstances, it does seem to me that the book creates a very subtle pressure on those who are of sound mind but disabled or unhappy to end it all.
Anyway, I’m being a bit inarticulate here as I try to develop a more structured thought process on this, so I’d love it if you all would chime in with your thoughts on the subject.
Related posts:
- Bringing women back from the pit of living death
- A Dem living high on the European hog
- Maybe living in a target city helps the reality checks
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I will have to take exception with you on part of this on the Schiavo case, vis a vis her “husband wanted her to die.” You cannot know this, nor can you know what her parents were really thinking.
The important question about it is, why does the government have an interest in the matter? More importantly why should I trust your judgement over my own when it was my time to make a decision about my wife’s last moments?
It seems to me that many want to control others but in different ways.
Tyranny can occur from both the majority as well as the indivdual
The government cannot eliminate a person’s liberties or life without due process. Thus whenever other parties are ending other party’s lives, the government must ensure that due process is conducted, in order to avoid murderous motives.
Her husband was not her husband. Her husband already had his family, but he also had the ultimate say on Terri Schiavo’s condition, regardless of what her biological family wanted.
This was the law, but it wasn’t due process. It had as much relation to true justice as lawsuits for tort lawyers looting healthcare for their personal bank accounts do. Legal, yes. Sanctioned, yes. Just, no. Due process, no. The due process is lacking, that’s why injustice resulted. Not enough process was conducted to purify the greed and the biases. It’s not even good process vs bad process. In Schiavo’s case, it was no process. In tort lawyer’s case, it was too little process. Incomplete process in favor of lawyers and not share holders, companies, or private citizens.
This is a basic conflict of interest case, but the law didn’t care about that process. Which makes it a law that’s protected by other laws that require judges to recuse themselves, as well as other types of laws concerning conflict of interest.
The conflict of interest was protected in Schiavo’s case, by laws against conflicts of interest. That’s not an improper enforcement of the law. It’s rather a miscarriage of justice
What the husband was thinking and what her parents were thinking was self-confident from their own words. There’s no particular reason to believe at this time they were lying. Even a conflict of interest isn’t lying, per say.
Allen, when you demand that food and water be withdrawn from a human being—which is what Terry Schiavo’s philandering husband did—and you’re willing to wait out the 13 days it takes her to die from starvation and dehydration, I’d say you have a pretty clear-cut case of somebody “wanting her to die.”
Her parents were very clear that they were willing to take her off her loving husband’s hands, with no strings attached. How you can claim that Bookworm “cannot know this” is beyond me.
Please, please, please….NO “living wills”….. Whatever you write down will be interpreted by lawyers and “ethicists” who do not love you.
Instead, go here (http://www.nrlc.org/euthanasia/willtolive/index.html) and download The Will to Live. Excellent, and potentially life-saving.
By the way, since Michael Schiavo was living with another woman with whom he had children; and since he used the money given him by a jury for Terri’s rehab and care to pay lawyers to get permission to dehydrate her to death; and since he turned down the offer of money to give up his “rights” as her “husband”; it seems quite plain to anyone with the facts and an open mind, that he wanted her dead. And (shamefully) the U.S. judiciary helped him make it happen, despite her parents pleas and their willingness to take on ALL the financial and other burdens involved.
A lot of people tend to have this tendency to want to defend people like MIchael Schiavo because they don’t want their own personal situation affected negatively.
Thus lawyers defend, sanction, or simply ignore the John Edwards and the John Kerries and the various other lawyers corrupting America. Why? Because they’re lawyers, and they all have this profession that they want to defend, but not reform. They don’t want certain changes affected, because it would affect their own jobs or firms. So they let the Edwards go. They may want to say something, but they may just tell themselves that it isn’t worth it, that it won’t do anything, that ‘the law’ is responsible for lawyers and their legal/judicial actions, not other lawyers.
This is a shortsighted viewpoint, of course. There is no benefit accrued from tort lawyers to other lawyers. The former makes the latter look evil. No profession can exist if they allow their members to go rogue and act in the name of the guild without being punished or purged by the guild for violating standards. This is as true for the military, lawyers, as it is true for husbands and wives.
There is no way, in any shape or form, that defending Michael Schiavo is going to help the situation of any other couple in similar straits.
And (shamefully) the U.S. judiciary helped him make it happen, despite her parents pleas and their willingness to take on ALL the financial and other burdens involved.
A person in a state unable to render decisions on the legal battleground must appoint a second to act in their place, and that second must act with love in mind and heart. There can’t be any ulterior motives about collecting insurance by pulling the plug. There can’t be any conflict of interest concerning personal benefits by pulling the plug. It has to be done by a person with the client’s best interests at heart. But the law can’t guarantee that. It can only guarantee a will, something which may give a person you designate the legal right to decide in your place.
That can’t be misinterpreted by lawyers or enemies of the person in question, unless they have chosen their own enemy to act as their final decider.
Most of America didn’t care that Michael Schiavo wasn’t acting out of law. All they cared about was some flimsy legal documents and were annoyed that the mean Republicans were getting in people’s private affairs. As if they would prefer somebody like Michael Schiavo to decide whether they live or die. Well, since they elected Obama, obviously they wanted somebody even worse.
So when it comes time for the national healthcare services to euthanize them, I’ll be happy to tell them flat out that this is what they bought with other people’s lives. The lives of others aren’t so easy to play with now that their lives are on the line, isn’t that right.
acting out of law
Correction, love.
One of the things I found fascinating about the Schiavo case was the Scientology connection. I don’t know _anything_ about Scientology, but at that time, it was being presented that one of the principles of Scientology is that imperfect humans should be “let go”, and that the judge in the initial case – and also, apparently a personal friend of Michael Schiavo – was a Scientologist in an area with a fairly high density of Scientologists in the local population.
This was material presented in various blogs at the time, and I don’t know if it’s factually correct since it certainly wasn’t presented by any of the news organizations. It does sound very similar to the “scientific” basis for euthanasia held by Zeke Emmanuel, though. No, I’m not saying Emmanuel is a Scientologist, but that if you approach the human race as simply a species of animal, not as a individuals made in the image of God with a soul that is unique with each individual, then much of what this attitude is very scientifically reasonable. It’s a form of breeding management. It’s only when you assign special value to the individual that it becomes unreasonable and unacceptable. Also fits right in there with Margaret Sanger and encouraging abortions for the less desirable members of society.
Science without a soul is dangerous.
If it were actually a matter of “let go”, I would have no objection. When my Daddy was dying, we “let go” – i.e., didn’t haul him to the hospital, didn’t hook him up to IV drips of this and that, etc. We fed him, gave him water, kept him clean, and as he became less and less able to take stuff in, and as his body did less and less with what he did take in, he died. At home, with his family around him, loved and cared for until the end.
Michael Schiavo and the U.S. judiciary “killed” Terri Schiavo – by withholding the minimum needed to sustain life….food and water. When the weak can be killed by those who are stronger and want them dead, we are ALL at serious risk.
Consider this: what happened to Terri Schiavo is happening to hundreds of people around our country right now….the difference is that there isn’t a dispute about it, so the “news media” isn’t interested. Today, human life is NOT protected from its beginning until its natural end in the United States of America.
Who is next?
I know who will be last, however. It’ll be illegal combatants, terrorists like Al Meg.
THey’ll get plenty of due process in whatever form is necessary to process their crimes against humanity into cases of compassionate need.
They’ll have terrorist funds and state support, even, while American citizens are killed out of hand because they lacked certain friends in high places. Obama will know and decide all. When power is centralized, everybody has an interest in buying into the power structure. This is a great way to hoard wealth and power into a select few. By making them the source, you cut out everybody that lacks connections. And people can’t get connections without pooling their influence and wealth to use as bribes.
A terrorist or mass murderer will never have to be starved to death or executed by dehydration. That would be considered cruel and unusual punishment, when death can be had through any number of alternatives that are both more efficient and less brutal.
But Floridans and Americans believed it was the right sentence here. That full autonomous power was MS’s right. That he could decide how to dispose of Terri once he had no use any more for her, when she became only an impediment to his life.
It was only logical that Obama would be elected given the decadence and decay of American conscience and sense. Bush and the wars distracted people, and obviously they were higher priorities by due diligence. But now we come full circle, as I suspected we would. Such injustices do not simply go away. They leave a stain and a mark, as permanent as Vietnam, upon America. People will be reminded, forcibly, of such things until the end of time or just the end of their life. There is no self-denial powerful enough to get rid of it. There is no delusion potent enough to hide it in the veil of illusion. There is no drug illegal enough to render reality into unreality. Due diligence and due process is required in the execution of anyone, innocent or guilty. To disregard this because it is an unsettling matter, something people thought they could ignore and forget about, was about as realistic as the Army thinking it could forget Vietnam and guerrilla warfare. What was worse, however, was to disregard due process and then go forth and carry out and support the carrying out of the execution. This is precisely what isn’t supposed to happen to innocents caught in the justice system and the Death Penalty. The moral armor and pretense of all those anti-DP tools were stripped away, if you asked me, the moment they disregarded due process in favor of a convenient execution. The point of due process is not to ensure that innocents aren’t executed. That’s impossible. The point is to ensure that executions are necessary and only used when necessary when the conditions justify it. It isn’t supposed to be one man acting as judge, jury, and executioner. It isn’t supposed to be vigilantism, and it isn’t supposed t be autocratic orders forming concentration camps. Due process isn’t supposed to release the guilty and innocent together. It is a basic standard provided to all, and the benefits are worth the cost of criminals slipping away due to technicalities. The process is what matters, because human judgment on guilt and innocence can always be fallible. The system, however, should balance out the human foibles. Except in this case, the system magnified human foibles. What is the point of paying the cost of released criminals when the system of justice we have, Florida has, is no better than some two bit tin pot dictator sitting on a throne issuing writs of execution? What are we paying for for this ‘due process’ system of justice that is worth that? Murderers and rapists are released to prey upon the civic body again and again, and this is what it was supposed to be for? So that executioners can sit behind the law and use it to strip other people of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without any due process at all? It’s kind of like Social Security, a pyramid scheme. A con game. Snake oil.
Once a society is broken down to nothing but crooks and petty thugs that are too cowardly to get blood on their own hands but sure as heck wants their portion of the loot, a Strong Man is inevitable. An autocrat that will come in and beat the criminals into submission with Absolute Power. Cause that society has lost any right to something called ‘self-determination’. They will be made into something better, by someone more powerful than they. It is inevitable.
If you haven’t already read this one, you should.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/obama_the_repo_man.html
Looks good, Suek.