Sometimes I just want to fast-forward myself to the point where the media frenzy surrounding Terri Schiavo has subsided. You should know the story by now... married woman has a stroke in 1990 and becomes comatose, her husband is appointed legal guardian and wins a malpractice lawsuit in 1992, husband claims she expressed that she didn't want to be kept alive artificially and fights to end her life, her parents want to keep her alive and say that she can be rehabilitated, the battle rages over whether or not to keep the feeding tube in her, the tube goes out, tube goes back in, out again, in again, out again, the battle goes up to the Supreme Court who declines to hear the case, handing the victory to the husband, protests amass while she wastes away without the feeding tube, and finally today the woman passes away.

Normally, my opinion would be, she said she didn't want to live like that, let her die in peace. But there was just too much gray area in this case. First of all, this was all word of mouth... there's no written statement from Terri expressing her wishes. Second, it seemed really fishy that Michael Schiavo would claim to have his wife's best interests in mind, but while Terri's been in this vegetative state, he went and had an affair with another woman, even going so far as to father two kids with her... all the while retaining his legal guardianship over Terri, not even divorcing her. And how suspicious is it that only now after he's run out of money to care for her, that he's suddenly pushing to let her die? I mean, if she said she didn't want to be on life support, this was said over fifteen years ago. And this method of euthanasia - slowly starving her to death - seems really cruel to me. Yes, I know that she felt no pain this way, but still... it just rubs me the wrong way a little bit.

Well, all I can do - all anyone can do now - is pray for the repose of Terri's soul, pray for the healing of her family's hearts, and pray that no harm comes to Michael for making this difficult decision, however questionable that decision might have been. In this day and age, where a few right-wing wackos are twisted enough to kill doctors who perform abortions, you know poor Michael's gonna have to watch his back now.

If any good can come out of this, it's that this unfortunate event will drive more people to make "living wills", legal documents that outline what people want done to them in the event they become incapacitated. I know I want to put together something like that soon.

Rest in peace, Terri.