[Mb-civic] FW: Friedman's Living Will

[Michael Butler]

------ Forwarded Message
From: mark.petracca at verizon.net
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 21:58:42 -0500

> Subject: Friedman's Living Will
>
> This was sent to me by a good friend and I found some solace in it.
>   
> Robert Friedman of the St. Petersburg Times offers a  fitting response
> to the deplorable acts of the Shiavo case. Enjoy...
>  
> Living will is the best revenge
>  
> By ROBERT FRIEDMAN, Perspective Editor
> Published March 27, 2005
> 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: * In the event I lapse into a persistent
> vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to
> extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years
> wouldn't be long enough for me.
> * I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging
> in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their
> bank accounts.
> * I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an
> interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited
> less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a
> semblance of a normal life.
> * 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 those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.
> * I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to
> bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying
> patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.
> * I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their
> deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against
> any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who
> disagree with them.
> * I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the
> Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn
> my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.
> * I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors,
> ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Bobby,"
> as if they had known me since childhood.
> * I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be
> nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and
> ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans
> without adequate health coverage.
> * Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress -
> especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe
> in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of
> doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my
> case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate
> that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national
> security and the economy.
> * In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case
> as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting
> political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.
>  * And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of
> his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case
> in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.
> * I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition
> on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should
> have remained private.
> * Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a
> persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy
> who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death
> warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case
> because it is always best "to err on the side of life."
> * 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.
>
>
Mark Petracca
PetRock, Inc.
4 West 83rd Street
NYC 10024
212-877-7330

For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
                                    Ralph Waldo Emerson


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