Because I Want Him to Live!

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the murder of Terri Schindler Schiavo. She was starved to death over a two-week period by order of a judge who ruled her quality of life as too poor to be kept alive. She would no longer be a burden to her husband or society. At the time, I remember feeling so powerless. As the tragedy unfolded we became merely ineffective spectators unable to save this poor woman.

My friend, Kathy, on her blog Faith on the High Wire thoughtfully shares her views about Terri and the quality of life issue. I encourage you to visit her post and read it, as I think she speaks for many of us who hold the highest regard for the sanctity of life.

The reminder this week of Terri’s death coincided with events a lot “closer to home.” My elderly step-father’s health is especially precarious right now. He has been battling a very painful bout of cellulitis resulting in the amputation of the toes of his right foot, including a portion of the foot itself. Additionally, he has endured gall bladder surgery, sepsis, and aspiration pneumonia caused by food and drink entering his lungs whenever he eats. Now that he cannot eat normally, a feeding tube as been inserted into his intestine. He has been in and out of hospitals and rehab centers since last fall. End-of-life concerns have weighed prominently on the minds of all who love and care for him.

In the March 20, 2004 ADDRESS OF JOHN PAUL II TO THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON "LIFE-SUSTAINING TREATMENTS AND VEGETATIVE STATE: SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES AND ETHICAL DILEMMAS", the Holy Father writes:

The sick person in a vegetative state, awaiting recovery or a natural end, still has the right to basic health care (nutrition, hydration, cleanliness, warmth, etc.), and to the prevention of complications related to his confinement to bed. He also has the right to appropriate rehabilitative care and to be monitored for clinical signs of eventual recovery.

I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act. Its use, furthermore, should be considered, in principle, ordinary and proportionate, and as such morally obligatory, insofar as and until it is seen to have attained its proper finality, which in the present case consists in providing nourishment to the patient and alleviation of his suffering.

Although he is not in any sort of ‘vegetative state’, my step-father is old – only two months shy of his 94^th birthday. There are some who have questioned the wisdom of inserting the feeding tube, including a palliative care counselor who asked my mom accusingly, “Why did you agree to have the feeding tube inserted? I thought you weren’t going to do that?”

“Because I want him to live!” she replied.

My mom explained to the bewildered woman that the doctor had given her every reason to believe her husband could get well again; that he would return home to his garden and his beloved pet cats. The woman, shaking her head, gazed at her silently, incredulously and judgmentally. Fortunately for my mom, the woman is not assigned to my step-father’s case.

Even if my step-father has only weeks or months to live, he still deserves the basic human right of “nutrition, hydration, cleanliness, warmth, etc.” What the palliative care representative, and other advice-givers, want is for my step-father to continue eating normally, ultimately resulting in his dying of pneumonia. There are some who suggest not feeding him at all. Just let him die. He has suffered so much. After all, what quality of life will he now have with a feeding tube and no toes? He has lived a good, long, happy life. It’s time, they say, to let him go.

Pope John Paul II continues,

In this regard, I recall what I wrote in the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, making it clear that "by euthanasia in the true and proper sense must be understood an action or omission which by its very nature and intention brings about death, with the purpose of eliminating all pain"; such an act is always "a serious violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person" (n. 65).

Considerations about the "quality of life", often actually dictated by psychological, social and economic pressures, cannot take precedence over general principles.

If anyone understands the magnitude of my step-father’s suffering, it is my mom. She suffers right along with him and prays that it be lifted up to Christ’s own suffering on the cross. Like many of us, she is mystified by God’s ways, but she trusts Him and she knows that He alone is the final arbiter; the one who has authority over all.

This week we witnessed the miracle of my step-father’s reception into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, not to mention my mom’s and several others. There has been much rejoicing - here and in Heaven, I'm sure. If God had healed him physically, our joy would not be as complete or as fervent.

This leads me to wonder, what if my mom had decided against the feeding tube? What if she had decided to let her husband succumb to the pneumonia? What if ‘we’ decided, not God? I shudder to think of what may have been a lost opportunity and the eternal consequences of a decision based on what some deem "the right to die with dignity."

John Paul, the Great, pray for my step-father and pray, too, for us.

Darby Fitzpatrick (c) 2010