A Year From Now....

....you probably won't be thinking about Terri Schiavo.

But I imagine her husband and her parents and her siblings will still be - once, twice, a hundred times a day.

I know I think about my dad that often.

When a 400 pound piece of machine rolled over my dad in the top of our grain silo, it pinned him down, forcing his face into the silage and suffocated him. He lay there, choking to death for more than 15 minutes. His lungs filled with rotting corn, he stopped breathing and he died. My brother and I found him within 15 minutes of the accident. We pulled his body from underneath the machinery and did our best to breathe life into his body. His lungs only rattled when I blew air into them and I have never been able to find the words to describe that terrifyingly hollow sound.

Paramedics flew in and they climbed through the top of the silo and they ripped his clothes off him so they could apply electric paddles to his chest. I cannot remember how many times they pumped his body full of electricity but I wish I could forget what it was like to see his body jump into the air when the paramedic cried, “Clear!” They put his body on a gurney, secured his neck with a brace and airlifted his body to Louisville, 60 miles from my parents’ farm.

While my brother was driving my mother to the hospital, I called my sister, my aunts and uncles and told them what happened. I remember standing in the kitchen of the house where I grew up saying, “Dad was hurt in an accident….” There was silage in my shoes that crunched against my toes -- the smell of dried, rotting corn husks lingering in my nose.

When I got to the hospital, I learned they had resuscitated my dad, but he was severely brain damaged. As the swelling subsided, his eyes would flitter and suddenly blink open – his blue green eyes turned milky grey and the wry craftiness that always sparkled in them whenever he spoke was gone. He was there, alive, in one way….but what was unique and special to my dad was gone.

It took a day for everyone to get to the hospital. From far and wide, my family gathered together and the point came when a doctor asked my mother what medical measures she wanted to take. I will be the first to admit, that sitting there, holding my dad’s hand, his eyes sometimes popping open, his head sometimes twitching, that we wanted to believe that he could be….he would be okay. But they showed us the scans from his brain…and even the most wishful thinking couldn’t overcome that horrible imagery.

My father was a tinkerer; he read two newspapers every day; when he was 62, he retired from farming and went back to school getting his GED. He was thoughtful and deliberate and I loved him very much. But that was not my father in that bed. His brain…..his brain was a nasty mess of bloated disfigured mass. There was no brain wave activity. And my mother made the decision to remove the tubes that were keeping him alive. Watching him finally stop breathing was no great solace, no great relief……it was horrible and painful and thinking about it makes me cry ten years later.

I want to make one thing clear, I don’t begrudge Terri Schiavo’s parents for wanting to keep their little girl alive. But I don’t believe that Terri (as they knew her and loved her) was there for them at all. Bulimia, a heart attack and brain damage had already taken their little girl even though her body was still present.

I am, however, outraged by politicians who accuse Michael Schiavo of killing her. Anyone who has had to witness a loved one removed from feeding tubes (or any sort of life support) does not do so skipping around the bed. You don’t gleefully pull the plug. That’s bullshit. And Dubya mouthing off about erring on the side of life…well….too damn bad he didn’t do that before he sent 1,000+ Americans off to die in a bogus war.

But…that’s enough…. I’m done. I won’t start the wrangling here….I just had to say something…..for whatever reason. I’m simply going to sign off now and go call my mother. There’s been enough family drama today…and though unlikely, I hope that Terri’s family and Michael Schiavo find some peace of mind as Terri, herself, finally rests in peace.