I learned that Terri Schiavo had died when I found this AP report in my aggregator yesterday morning on my way to making breakfast. I read through the first two paragraphs but couldn’t get past the third:
No one from her side of the family was with her at the moment of her death. Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, were not at the hospice, Felos said. And her brother had been barred from the room at Michael Schiavo’s request moments before the end came.
In my family we have broken relationships. We have wounds still open. We have scars and pain. Yet I hope that if I were dying, all my relatives would be allowed to be in the room with me. I hope that whoever wants to be with me could be with me as I begin my final breaths.
But I also hope that I live to see the day when these broken relationships are healed long before I die.
1 response so far ↓
1 Kai Jones // Apr 1, 2005 at 11:39 am
A little over a year ago, when my mother was dying, she was in a coma, and her entire body would twitch (as if annoyed) whenever her siblings were in the room. Finally my brother and sister and I barred them from the room. Mom calmed down considerably, and died within 20 minutes.
I’m not ashamed that I kept them out: I did the right thing for my mother.
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