Living Will
By ROBERT FRIEDMAN
Published March 27, 2005
Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a
more
detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what
mine
says:
* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want
medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish
semi existence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.
* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in
a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their
bank accounts.
* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an
interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less
than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of
a normal life.
* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots
from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by
investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for
Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a
well.
* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.
* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring
further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients
and families whose stories are sadder than my own.
* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their
deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any
judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree
with them.
* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the
Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my
case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.
* I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors,
ersatz friars and all other hangers-on- to start calling me "Bobby," as if
they had known me since childhood.
* I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be
nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and
ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without
adequate health coverage.
* Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress
especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in
"less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of
doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my
case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate
that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national
security and the economy.
* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case
as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting
political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.
* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his
Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in
ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.
* I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical
condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that
should have remained private.
* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a
persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who
publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as
governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it
is always best "to err on the side of life."
* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at
the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing
bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.
* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human
being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned
directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with
them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position
to argue.