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O most gracious
Heavenly Father...
I know, You’re
probably surprised to hear from me again so soon. I, who haven’t
prayed to You since I was 15 and desperate to get into my
girlfriend’s pants. You let me down then, Lord, she only let me get
to third base, and I gave up on praying. (As for the girlfriend, we
worked something out on our own, later.)
Then, just six weeks ago,
I
sent up a prayer to You for the continued long life of Your
faithful servant, Ioannes Paulus II, who I thought might be lying on
his deathbed. The Pope got better, so maybe there is something to
this shit. Sorry, Lord, I meant doo-doo.
Now there is another life in danger, and I felt I must once more
appeal to You. I’m speaking, of course, of Terri Schiavo, who
languishes in a hospice bed being fed by a tube. You’ve probably
read about her in the newspapers, or on the Internet. She apparently
has the IQ of the spinach salad I ate last night, but of course all
lives are valuable to You, oh Lord.
A few days ago I thought I had a solution that would appeal to You,
Biblical scholar that You surely must be. I thought they ought to
cut Terri in two. Then the parents could have one half and keep
feeding it, and the husband could have the other half, and bury it.
But then Congress stepped in, and I realized the situation is more
complex. Can you beat it, Lord? These
self-sacrificing servants of the people have momentarily put
aside the extremely important, vital, critical work they were
doing—grilling multi-millionaire baseball players on steroid use—to
valiantly take up Terri’s cause! Seldom has the republic seen such
courage!
However, now
Tom DeLay (R-Texas) wants a piece of her. So does
Bill
Frist (R-Tennessee),
Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois), and
Mel Martinez
(R-Florida). But I’m thinking, after twenty years in a persistent
vegetative state, that poor Terri probably weighs no more than a bag
of desiccated bones, and I’m concerned that there may not be enough
of her to go around. Add in the fact that majorities of both House
and Senate voted for the bills to jam the feeding tube back into her
helpless mouth, which makes at least 270 congresspeople, and the
piece each concerned participant will get is getting smaller and
smaller. We’re talking fingernail clippings here, Lord! Not to
mention the press! They need their bits, too. And Governor
Jeb Bush
(R-Florida), who I suggest should receive Terri’s wishbone. (“I wish
I could take my idiot brother’s place in the White House in 2008!”)
It may be necessary to keep the feeding tube in if only to fatten
her up a bit, like a
Strasberg goose.
DeLay, Frist, Hastert, and Martinez could split up the liver.
So the first thing I’d like ask of You, Lord, is that you add the
names of the gentlemen above to my prayer for the Pope. Yea, Lord, I
would plead that the exact fate I asked for the Holy Father should
befall these men, and all the others who voted for this
life-affirming measure. (It was a voice vote in the House, Lord, but
I’m sure You know who they were.) It’s the least they deserve for
taking their highly-principled stand.
But are they doing enough? That’s what I’ve been pondering on, dear
Lord. Are we absolutely sure now that no one will ever be deprived
of that last teeny iota of pain, suffering, degradation, and
heartbreak that it is Thy will for them to suffer, Lord? I don’t
think so. I think it’s still entirely possible that, somewhere,
somehow, some evil doctor or husband or wife or child of one of Your
brain-dead creations—some poor soul who may have days, weeks, yea
even years, Lord, to suffer ... that some evil one will pull the
plug, remove the ventilator, pull out the feeding tube. And that is
not to be tolerated!
Therefore I propose that You, in Your infinite wisdom, work through
Your tools in Washington to enact legislation to make completely
sure it never happens again. I call it the Protection For the
(Possibly) Dead Act of 2005. I don’t have to tell You or them all
the details in this prayer, Lord, I’m sure You and they will work
them out. But here’s the basic points:
See, doctors are pronouncing people “dead” every hour of every day.
But who knows, really? I mean, besides You? And You don’t sign death
certificates. Just look at poor Terri Schiavo. A bunch of doctors
have pronounced her “brain dead,” whatever that means, and a bunch
of congressmen, and a few doctors, have pronounced her alive and
kicking and really only waiting around for the right moment to stand
up and start dancing the cha-cha. So who decides?
It has to be Congress. They’re the only ones qualified, they told me
so themselves, on the TV. And they don’t need to seek medical
opinions on the matter. They can determine what death is by enacting
a simple rule.
Whenever anybody just looks like they’re dead, they should be
immediately hooked up to every life-saving device currently
available to medical science and the date of congressional
intervention entered on a Provisional Death Certificate. Then we
wait for a specified period. Say, 50 years. That’s the period a
copyright lasts, the life of the author plus 50 years. Sounds good
to me. Then the “possibly” dead person enters into another stage of
life. Let’s call it “Purgatory on Earth.” From that point on, no
matter what some whining merchants of death might say, the person is
“alive,” in a legal sense, until the 50 years is up. Or until
something else happens ... and I’ll get to that in a moment.
Yes, I know it will be hard, but what worthwhile life-saving mission
isn’t? It will be worth it.
One of the toughest parts will be digging up everyone who has died
since 1955 and putting them into hospital beds and caring for them.
Whew! People will need strong stomachs for that! They’ll need big
reserves of compassion and endurance caring for those who “die”
henceforth, too. But no matter that they begin to stink, no matter
that the flesh begins to fall from their bones, no matter that we’ll
have to be vigilant to keep the rats and cockroaches from devouring
them. We have to be sure they’re dead.
There is one obvious drawback, dear Lord, and I think You’ll see it
immediately,
good Republican that You are. Who will pay for all this?
Congress and, more importantly, Your beloved president, have
determined that it is Evil to increase our taxes. You told him so
Yourself, in one of your frequent talks, surely You remember.
The answer is easy, if you’ll forgive me boasting, Lord. Only the
rich can be held to this rigorous standard. They’re the only ones
who can afford it. Your president and Your Congress are busy
whittling away at all the vicious communistic programs that provided
health care to the poor. The government can’t pay for this new law.
Therefore, it has to be the rich (which, in this context, means
anybody who has any money, or any insurance coverage) who pay for
their own loved ones. They will keep spending money on their
possibly dead relatives until they are poor themselves, and the
problem will take care of itself.
Social
Darwinism at its finest. If they can’t pay, screw ‘em.
It’s simplicity itself, Lord. We’ll need new hospitals to care for
the possibly dead, of course, and they’ll fill up fast, but at the
rates charged for intensive care these days even the Rockefellers
and their insurers will be bankrupt within 50 years, in which case
we can just bury the stiffs. Nobody wants a poor sick person, and
they’d want a poor possibly dead person even less.
I ask it in Jesus’ name, oh Lord. Amen.
P.S. I know it may be presumptuous of me, Lord, but I did have one
question, and I was hoping You could explain it to me. Why is it
that Your Republican party is always talking about state’s rights
... until it comes to certain issues such as the
right
to life, the
war on drugs, or Federal
intervention in
presidential elections? Even some Democrats! Explain that to me,
Lord?
And while we’re at it, you’ve probably spotted that my proposed
legislation to dig up possibly dead people is, technically, an
ex
post facto law, forbidden by
the constitution. I
knew I couldn’t slip that one by you, Heavenly Father! However, the
bill Congress just passed concerning Terri Schiavo and no one else
is what is known as a
bill of attainder. Look it up! So we can call it a draw.
Amen!
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