The buds and I have been on a tangent of discussing death and dying. It came about for a couple of reasons. One of our regulars had a friend to die and has been pretty traumatic. He had only dated her once when she discovered she had a terminal illness. She put up a courageous fight for two years and all during the process, we discussed it. Our bud has been a "stand up" guy and has stayed her friend. Recently a couple of us attended her Memorial Service where he spoke and did a great job, to say the least.
Another reason is because several of us have seen Million Dollar Baby--a good movie; and, in many ways, very inspiring. In Million Dollar Baby, Hillary Swank, one of the best actresses around, plays Maggie. Morgan Freeman, Eddie; and Clint, Frankie--basically, Clint and Morgan play themselves. Clint protrays his"kind persona" towards Hillary as he does the prostitutes in Unforgiven.
Million Dollar Baby is a movie that ought to be reckoned with because it ultimately focuses on a central problem in our society and one where denial is rampant; mercy killing/euthanasia. With health care costs soaring and twenty million people without health care coverage, we are keeping people alive in artificial ways and long after their bodies would have naturally shut down. We are in a crisis and have allowed the right wing zealots, who purport to know what God thinks, and who wouldn't know an original thought if it ran over them, control the debate. We need to get off that dime.
I've been doing lots of thinking about the Terri Schiavo situation. I can hardly believe the President and Congress have decided to get involved. For all practical purposes, she has been brain dead for fifteen years. It has been a sad case anyway you look at it. A mother and father who are overwhelmed with grief and have become hard-core activists, I think, because of their grief. A husband who says his wife didn't want to live like this but nobody else knows if she said it or not. And, apparently, he is not so sterling a character. It has become a mess inasmuch as it shows again that most people have enormous difficulties in dealing with death.
As a young pastor, I can remember once saying to the wife of a really elderly husband who had just died, "he's better off." She immediately corrected me and said, "No, I don't agree, I would want him back under any circumstances." I don't understand thinking like that but I know that many feel that way--Terri Schiavo's parents!
Why really would the Terri Schiavo's parents persist so vehemently in keeping the daughter alive. I don't get it personally. I use to go into these old age warehouses called Nursing Homes where acres of old people would reside. They didn't know they were in the world. Many had not known who they were for years. Yet, the parents, religious zeolots, the governor of Florida, his brother, the President and Congress are poised to do whatever is necessary to keep someone alive who has not known she is in the world for fifteen years. Why?
Let the poor woman die! It's amazing that a movie like Million Dollar Baby defines the debate better in moral terms than the Church or certainly any of the zeolots. When Hillary aka as Maggie is lying in the rehab center, knowing she is in the world but not wanting to live in her present state, she makes the decision about her life--I want to die.
Does a person's life belong to them? Albert Ellis, long time psychologist and therapist, not to mention, one of my heroes, has argued over and over, “Yes, a person’s life belongs to him/her. He says, “If a person says they are going to do themselves in,” I will say, “I understand, your life is your own but you must understand that if you are successful, there is no turning back.”
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