At the end of my broadcast on an unremarkable winter afternoon in 2005, I signed off as usual, said goodbye to Royal and Belinda, stuffed a handful of unused newspaper articles in my briefcase, headed out to the studio’s parking garage, and got in my car to drive home.
Usually I’m in the mood for a bit of peace and quiet, but not this day. Instead I turned on the radio. I got out of the studio fast enough to hear the Godfather come out of his hourly newsbreak.
Before going any further, let me make something clear: I’m a huge Rush Limbaugh fan. Nobody does talk radio better, not even me.
Moreover, Rush has made me money by elevating our industry to the top of the heap. He saved me even more through the tax cuts he promoted as part of the Republican agenda. I love what he’s done for our format, what he’s done for America, and what he’s done to the left.
Rush Limbaugh did for talk radio what Arnold Palmer did for golf. Everybody who does now or ever will earn a living in talk radio owes him no less than a big wet kiss on the mouth. (Thus far, he has steadfastly refused to accept my token of gratitude.)
Liberals hate him—just hate him—and I love Rush for that, too.
On this particular day, I had no doubt what his subject would be, but I wanted to hear his latest thoughts. As it turned out, he had a question, directed at those he often refers to as “you liberals.”
Rush wanted to know, “Why do you want Terri Schiavo to die?”
The reason I remember this day, and this broadcast, so well is simple. I was firmly entrenched on the opposite side of the issue. In fact, I was pretty much hanging out there alone. Rush, Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy, and the rest of my not-so-liberal radio colleagues were all reading from the same playbook: Terri Schiavo must be kept alive. Period.
The question intrigued me. Why did I want Terri Schiavo to die?
Yes, you that read correctly. I actually wanted Terri Schiavo to die. I wanted the courts to release her from the hell her soul was being forced to endure.
Why write about the case now? It’s old news, right?
Wrong.
Terri Schiavo became a household name, but, sadly, she’s far from the only person whose life has been artificially and needlessly prolonged through advances in medical technology. Only a few, like Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan, have become well known. But there are many, many others—and, as unpleasant as it is to contemplate, any one of us, or a loved one, could someday be in the same situation.
In the unlikely event you’ve forgotten the sad case of Terri Schiavo, allow me a very brief refresher here. She was young, just twenty-six, when she unexpectedly collapsed in her Florida home way back in 1990. For the next ten weeks Terri remained comatose. Eventually doctors decided she had lapsed into a persistent vegetative state. There was, they agreed, absolutely no chance of recovery.
Her loving parents continued to hold out hope—wishful, if understandable, thinking. What they were so earnestly praying for, however, was beyond the realm of possibility.
Eventually, in 1998, Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband and legal guardian, defied the wishes of his in-laws by petitioning the courts to remove her feeding tube. A fierce legal battle ensued, but when the issue came to a head, the aftermath of 9/11 was dominating the headlines, and the case attracted little attention from the national media.
It wasn’t until 2003, after a federal court of appeals upheld numerous lower court rulings granting Michael Schiavo’s petition to terminate treatment, that the national media truly discovered the Terri Schiavo case. Along with the wave of publicity came well-intended but misguided efforts to “save” Terri Schiavo. These efforts succeeded in keeping her “alive” (if that’s the proper word) for another two years.
Over and over America was treated to a grim videotape on the cable news channels, a shot of someone dangling a balloon over Terri’s expressionless face. Many who watched the tape believed that her eyes were following that balloon, and quite a few believed they could discern a crooked smile on her face.
Every credible medical authority, however, chalked up such movement to an involuntary reflex action. The lights had gone out in Terri Schiavo’s mind, they explained.
Terri’s family clung to their state of delusion. They talked of taking her to the mall for her birthday once appropriate treatments restored her to a state of awareness. Spurious medical experts were presented to offer opinions on Terri’s condition and the hope for improvement. Other “experts” were brought forth to offer opinions that Terri had been beaten and abused, perhaps even strangled, by her husband.
Finally, Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed. Thirteen days later, she was at peace.
Two months after Terri Schiavo was pronounced dead, the results of the autopsy were made public. The autopsy confirmed that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state. She had suffered massive and irreversible brain damage. Huge parts of her brain had actually liquefied. And there was no evidence of any type of abuse at the hands of her husband.
The doctors also reported that Terri was blind. The part of her brain that controls vision was gone. She hadn’t been following that balloon with her eyes. She never did smile in recognition of loved ones when they walked into her hospice room.
So, why did I want Terri Schiavo to die? Rush’s question deserved an answer—not some glib response, but an honest, heartfelt answer.
Here it is: I wanted Terri Schiavo to die because she had earned it.
You see, I don’t view death as the end of the journey of a human soul. I view it as a transition.
The God I believe in would not waste the total life experiences of a human created in his image on a total and complete final death—a dead end, if you will, with nothing to follow. I simply cannot believe that it’s God’s plan that the life experiences of a man—wisdom gained, lessons learned, and love experienced—should disappear after death as if they never happened.
Rather, I believe that there’s something that follows the life we know on this Earth. In fact, I believe that most of the people who fought to keep the body of Terri Schiavo alive feel the same way.
These feelings give rise to some questions of my own—questions for the devoutly religious people who tried so passionately to keep Terri Schiavo on those feeding tubes.
Do you believe in God’s promise of everlasting life? Do you believe that the reward for a life well spent on this earth is a life with God in heaven after you die? If you do, then a few more questions, if you will….
Do you believe the human soul can make the transition to everlasting life while the human body that carried that soul clings to life on this earth? If you do, then you must surely believe that Terri Schiavo had earned and was already enjoying her reward in Heaven even as her empty body continued to breathe. Under those circumstances, why was it so important to you that the unneeded body of Terri Schiavo be kept alive?
But there is another possibility. What if the human soul is so inextricably connected with its earthly body that the complete transition simply isn’t made until that body ceases functioning, until genuine death occurs? Under those circumstances, how could you so ardently desire that the soul of Terri Schiavo spend five, ten, perhaps thirty years or more trapped in a useless and nonfunctioning husk, unable to move on to whatever reward awaits her? Wasn’t fifteen years enough?
Where did your concerns truly lie? With the eternal soul of Terri Schiavo, or with her earthly body?
Most of us are aware of the stories related by people who have near-death experiences. Usually, such things occur during a surgical procedure, severe trauma, or other medical emergency. These people describe a sensation of leaving their body at the very time the heart stops beating and the brain ceases functioning. They tell of floating above their body while watching doctors below working hard to resuscitate, to bring them back to life. As the heart once again starts beating and as the brain resumes its functions, they tell of a sensation of falling back into their own body to resume life.
Of course, we don’t hear from the patients upon whom resuscitation efforts are not successful. We don’t hear from them because they’ve left us. They’re gone on to experience whatever lies beyond. We call it death. I suspect that from their perspective they would call it a rebirth.
Is it possible that the soul of Terri Schiavo was floating—held in some prolonged and excruciating limbo—waiting for doctors to stop interfering with the process of her death? I believed it was—possible, at the very least—and that’s why I supported her husband’s desires to have her feeding tube removed.
Terri Schiavo wasn’t murdered. She was allowed to die.
Death was not the end for Terri Schiavo. It was a beginning. She was finally being allowed to enjoy the reward we all seek—a reward she deserved, a reward she earned.
During the entire Schiavo affair, I received 15,683 letters and e-mails from outraged listeners, informing me in no uncertain terms that they were “never going to listen to me again.” After the autopsy results showed that Terri was gone long before the plug was pulled, about three of these people wrote back to apologize.
As for the rest of you…no problem. Your apology is accepted, too.