Include Others In Terri Prayers

By JANET SHELTON, Guest Editorial

Published: November 6, 2003

This editorial first appeared in The Florida Catholic, newspaper of the Diocese of St. Petersburg.

The images break your heart. The vacant stare. The helpless body. Think of Terri Schiavo in her current state, and it is impossible not to share the tragedy of her circumstances, her loss.

But do not let your prayers end there.

As understandable as it is that people are praying for Terri, we cannot let the knowledge of one person’s pain make us blind to that of others. Outside of the spotlight, their plights are just as real.

Pray for the others in hospice care and their families. Protesters walked the sidewalks outside the Pinellas Park center where Terri lay after the feeding tube that has kept her alive for more than a decade was removed. Media trucks captured the scene, which kept the area congested with traffic for several blocks.

But down the hall from Terri, others were dying, perhaps even under similar circumstances, without the public outcry. How hard it must have been for their loved ones to endure the crowds, the signs, the conversation inside the hospice that surely must have been focused on Terri. At such an agonizing time, they had no peace for their loved one.

Pray for the children at Cross Bayou Elementary, who had to pass signs that called people murderers as they walked to and from school. Pray for their parents, who weren’t altogether sure that the protesters weren’t violent. People who claim to support life have been known to kill and hurt others in their attempt to protect life they consider “worthy” and those people spread fear that overrides any message of love they preach.

As you pray for Terri and her family, pray for other fractured families. Imagine how hard it is when the people you love hate one another. Pray that Terri is not aware of the animosity that has formed between her husband and her parents. Pray for other families such as them.

According to news accounts of the malpractice trial, Terri was bulimic. She suffered from an eating disorder that threw off her potassium levels that caused the heart attack that cut off oxygen to her brain and caused her brain damage. Her husband, parents, brother and sister watched someone they love waste away and that must have been unbearable. But they were not alone.

Many families have had to watch helplessly as their loved ones damaged or destroyed themselves.

Pray for the mentally ill, for the suicidal, for those people who are slowly killing themselves by intent or as a result of an abusive lifestyle.

Pray for the people who deal every day with the results of severe brain trauma. Pray for the people who love them, for the people who take care of them.

Pray for the starving. No one is certain if Terri can feel hunger. But there are people all over the world who are starving and fully cognizant of their situation. They have watched others die and know that they will certainly follow. Try to consider the parents who have lost a child to starvation. Surely they begged God to take them instead. In the zeal to remember Terri, do not forget them.

And when you pray for Terri, pray that God’s will be done. Only God knows her pain. Only God knows whether or not she wants to keep living in this world and not in heaven.

And when Terri dies, whether it be days or years, don’t stop those rosaries and novenas. When her life is over, others will still need your help.

Protest for them. Call your legislators for them. Cry for them. Most of all, pray for them.