Like rain on your wedding day

Can I finally say this please?  Enough already.

I don't have an opinion as to who is doing the right thing regarding Terry Schiavo, because, frankly, it's none of my business.  I know how I would want this scenario handled if it were me that was severly brain damaged with no real hope of recovery, and I surely would not want to wait fifteen years to go to whatever is next beyond this life.

It's terribly sad that there are two sides at war over this, sides that used to get along.  I see the reasoning in both the way Michael Schiavo wants this to end, and they way Terry Schiavo's parents want this to continue.  However, I don't understand why Michael doesn't turn over custody to his in-laws.  He'd be relieved of his burden, and the Schindlers' would get their wish to see their daughters life continue. That would seem to have been a sensible solution. 

I have nothing but sympathy for everyone involved, and I hope I am never placed into a position resembling anything they have had to go through.

I do have some disgust though.  Quite a bit of it, actually, for everyone outside of those related to Terry Schiavo for allowing this to become an absolute circus.  The media should be ashamed.  Everyone who parks themselves in front of the hospice should be ashamed.  Randall Terry should be ashamed.  And the people who allow politics to enter into this should be ashamed.

Congress had absolutely no business getting involved in this to the extent that it did last week.  It's frightening that the House created a new law because a majority of them did not agree with the ruling of multiple courts.  Florida governor Jeb Bush's song and dance has been an embarrassment as well, especially when he presented a doctor who claimed that Mrs. Schiavo had been misdiagnosed and was not in a vegetative state.  As last week progressed I assumed that the governor was going to use force to take her out of the hospice and place her in state custody.

This has been another in what I am afraid will be a continual long line of issues that further divide this country.  The scary thing about this is that public opinion seems to say that what is happening is the right thing to do, that Mrs. Schiavo should be able to die peacefully.  The government doesn't appear to be listening to the public.  Our elected officials are making Terry Schiavo a martyr, and we have no way of knowing how she feels about this.

Isn't it ironic, though, that the people who are so morally outraged by these events are generally those that rise to their feet and proclaim that marriage must be protected as an institution between a man and a woman only?  Yet they do not believe that the husband of this woman is capable of fulfilling their wishes.  Isn't it also ironic that the politicians who met to pass a law to specifically bypass the rulings of appeals courts generally proclaim that government needs to get out of the way and let people live their own lives?  And that most of them are quick to support capital punishment, despite proof that it is a flawed means of justice, yet fight so hard to keep this person alive, who truly is under a death sentence?

Ironic, isn't it, that while thousands yell, argue and scream in Florida that almost no one remarks about a sixteen year old boy shooting nine people dead at his high school in Minnesota?  Or that the number of people killed by guns since the feeding tube was removed merit no support?  Ironic that huge sums of money are being spent waging this battle, yet countless people have not sought needed medical attention since Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube was removed because they have no medical insurance?  We have so many other things that need to be addressed in this country, issues that affect all of us on a daily basis, yet we focus on what should be a family's private struggle to find resolution to a horrible situation.

All these people on both sides who wish to play God, yet they lack even the smallest amount of compassion required to do so.

May God help us all.  We need it now more than ever.