Living Will Is the Best Revenge

Awkward Elevator Moment of the Week:

Colleague One: I'm sure y'all will think I'm a meanspirited bitch, but I'm so glad that Terri Schiavo has died, because she will no longer be a political football.

Colleague Two:  Terri Schiavo died?  I'm going to win some money!

But my favorite comment on the Schiavo events so far has been this column, "Living Will Is the Best Revenge" by Richard Friedman, which would be funny if it weren't so sad.  Some excerpts:

Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says:

* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.

* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.

* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue.

Don't we all.

Comments

[Paul M. Martin]

That "transient emotion" you refer to... Interesting...

Whatever it is, it's actually highly potent. I suspect it's the same thing that leads some Christians to feel more passionately about pre-natal lives and stem cells than, say, the full-blown children around the world who die of disease and malnutrition - or the people right here in the US who become seriously ill and sometimes die over lack of health insurance.

I really don't understand the phenomenon. It's clearly emotional, and has somehow become firmly wedded in the minds of many Christians with their idea of their religion. I seriously wish I understood it, because I think it's a terrible drain on energies that one would think could be directed to addressing the terrible problems of millons of human beings about whose fully intact humanity there can be no doubt. Paul M.