Letter From Terri Schiavo

Dear Mom & Dad & Mike,
Well, at long last I've arrived on the other side. I can't believe the long strange trip that became my life as a media circus, all of which I was oblivious to as it happened. Well, maybe some good can come of it if people express loudly and clearly and repeatedly to family and friends and in writing that their family members better not even think of doing what you all did to me. It's so insanely simple yet none of the talking heads on CNN or MSNBC were asking the most obvious question, "would you want to live as Terri Schiavo is living?" Of course everyone, even a vegetable, knows that Bill O'Reilly is an idiot, but you'd have expected a little more insightful debate among the supposedly respected broadcast media. Mike, I don't blame you for hooking up and having a couple of kids, after all we were trying to have a family when my untimely demise occurred. I would never want to deprive you of a family, after all when you love someone you want what's truly best for them. And Mike, thank you for trying to live up to my expressed wishes. Mom and Dad, how do you get off thinking you knew me well enough to speak for me and say I wouldn't want to starve to death when it's the torture of a vegetative existance that I truly didn't want. And how could you release all those pictures of me with my mouth hanging open, looking around like a goldfish in a bowl, just to get the sympathy vote? All it proved was how completely out of it I was. Why weren't you strong enough to just let me go after the accident when it was clear I wouldn't recover? Then you would've been able to spend the last 15 years living your own lives and you would remember me as the pretty, vital young woman I was. Yes it's unfortunate and unfair such a young woman came to such an end, but let's face it, there are lots more people with even more horrendous stories than mine, just look at the tens of thousands of young lives blown to smithereens in Iraq by the juvenile delinquent we call our president. Life isn't fair and that's a fact, but you acted as though death were not an option, as if I were supernatural and would live on forever if my feeding tube were allowed to nourish me. But who was nourishing my soul and spirit while I was trapped in a body that no longer served as a vessel for them? All those religious holy rollers who profess their fervid belief in God and Jesus and Heaven are such hypocrites. If they had the faith they profess to have, they would've trusted in God to take care of me when I passed from this physical life. We live in a twisted society of Michael Jackson trials and religious fundamentalists (no not just the Muslims, the Christians are equally as bad), while real issues and problems are ignored. I pray that wisdom and intelligence will eventually prevail. See you in the hereafter, Love Terri