Dearest Terri, How can it be? How can I have loved you so much without ever having met you? How can my country have abandoned you and starved you to death? How can it be?
I first heard of you on Catholic radio in 2003. Johnette Benkovic and Fr. Edmund Sylvia let us listeners know that a disabled woman might be killed merely because she couldn’t speak for herself. I began praying for you then, but suddenly the wheels of injustice had begun to crush you. Your starvation and dehydration began, and I wept for you and cried for you and called your governor. God bless him, he was able to save you then.
That’s when I began to dig into the circumstances that led to a runaway judicial system deciding to kill you.
I learned that your husband had received hundreds of thousands of dollars to care for you. Then, with all that money sitting in a trust fund he could inherit, he chose to let you suffer with a urinary tract infection in hopes that it would turn to septicemia and kill you. What pain you must have endured.
I learned that your husband was living with another woman and now has two children with her. I learned that your parents, your wonderful, loving parents, tried to have him removed as your guardian so that they could take care of you. I’ve learned now that the judge who decided you should die never ruled on your husband’s fitness to be your guardian.
I learned that you’ve been living for fifteen years assisted by nothing more complicated than a feeding tube. I heard from other members of the disabled community that they love their tubes. I’m sure that you loved yours. But I learned that the same judge who decided you should die also refused to allow you any swallowing therapy so that you might live without that feeding tube.
I learned that your dear friend Diane Meyer testified in court that you had great sympathy for Karen Ann Quinlan, a girl also famous for her disability. You said of Karen, “Where there’s life, there’s hope.” I repeated your words over and over as I watched your parents fight valiantly for your life. But the judge who decided you should die discounted Diane’s testimony and called for your death.
I learned that doctors disagreed over your condition. Many, many doctors and therapists watched video tapes of you and said that therapy would help you get better. But the judge who decided you should die judged you from those same video tapes and said therapy was useless.
I learned that the wheels of injustice would not stop turning. Your governor’s actions were declared unconstitutional, and the judge who had never met you called again for your death.
Your parents turned to the Holy Father who just a year ago spoke the words that could save you. All life, he said, is a fundamental good and must be protected. He was speaking specifically of you, Terri, and of all disabled people. Most importantly, he said that feeding you was morally obligatory. But the judge who decided you should die said that wasn’t important.
Your feeding tube was pulled, and for 24 hours I chose to starve along with you. How my heart broke for you as I, too, shivered and thirsted. My heart further broke at the thought that though I’d be able to eat again soon, that might not happen for you. Your parents fought and fought and fought for you, when I know they would have loved to have been by your side. Yet no matter how hard they fought, and no matter how hard thousands of us prayed for you, no judge would take pity on you and let you eat.
You passed from this world into the next, and thousands of us mourned. Please know that we promised in your memory that we would work to make sure this never happened to anyone else.
The Holy Father did not forget you either. He, too, has now passed from this life to the next, and his journey was blessedly similar to yours. As you approached the end of your earthly life, he accepted a feeding tube. His teaching became his treatment, and he showed his solidarity with you.
But it did not end there. Just as your husband had first hoped you’d die from a urinary tract infection, so too the Holy Father developed one. As if to prove to the world what danger you had suffered, his infection turned to septicemia and his body began to ebb.
As you clung to life longer than any of us knew was possible, so too did the Holy Father. A false report of the Holy Father’s death was announced and some thirty of us gathered at a playground fell to our knees in prayer for him. We ended by asking for your prayers, too.
In this octave of Easter, just three days after you died, so too died the Holy Father. Both of you died in the 9th hour, you in the morning, he in the evening. What an appropriate comment from God on the stages of your lives.
Just as we waited three days for Jesus to emerge from His tomb, you were in Heaven for three days waiting for the comfort of your Holy Father, the man who all the way from Rome reached out to try to save you.
I’m sure that he’s holding you now.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Outreach
Toni Collins is a convert to Catholicism, a church musician, a freelance writer, and a summa cum laude graduate in computer science of the University of California-Irvine. She and her husband, Rick, are the parents of four daughters and live in Northern California.
