Theresa Maria Schindler Shiavo, May you Rest in Peace

Terri-

You're not here now - and you haven't been for a very long time (in fact, before most discovered there even was an Internet - but there are a few things I need to say.

First, I'm so very sorry so many decided to turn your unconscious body into a platform for their own agenda. Most of us in America, however, just wanted you to go peacefully and with as much dignity as possible. We hated seeing your hospice bed become a stage and a circus. They say you were a very private person; this should not have happened.

I'm so sorry, too, that so many of those "ministers" attending you spouted far more political self-interest than God's love.

But Terri, I don't simply feel sorry for you. Clearly, many people loved you in your life. While I know your family was unhappy with some of what your husband - the man you chose "til death do you part" - decided, you have someone standing beside you who really did stay there until the end. Much has been said villifying your Michael for various things, but I say you're awfully fortunte. He could have left a long time before and saved himself an enormous amount of additional heartache beyond losing who you had been to him. I believe him when he says this was a promise he made to you that he felt obligated to fulfill.

And even if I and others were rather put off by some of what your birth family did in the process, we know they stood by you, too. How very few people are "fortunate" enough to have so many want to be with them that it erupts in fights (fights are common - the depth of the love is not so common).

I'm also so glad you were in a good hospice for your final days. The difference between a hospital and a hospice is night-and-day. While some people conspired to make a hospice sound like a concentration camp, a hospice is just the opposite: it tries to free the dying from all other concerns except their final time on this planet. A hospice understands the importance of the family and the whole person (no longer a patient) and of not trying to present a "one-size-fits-all" package to the dying.

Terri, I don't presume to know you from articles in the press, court documents, and much less from the circus on television. And I'm not entirely certain what waits us beyond this plane. But if there's another life, I hope it brings you all the joy and freedom and happiness that your illness at age 26 robbed from you here. If there "is" an ability to look down upon the mortal earth, forgive those who did things you might not have liked. The people closest to you made errors out of love; strangers like Tom DeLay did theirs to save their own ass. Forgive and then don't look back.

May God bless you and keep you and protect you from the fighting that mere humans could not.