A Living Will for Barney

In light of the ongoing Terri Schiavo melodrama, I’ve decided to be responsible and make out a “living will” in order to avoid any unpleasantness in the event that I may turn into a 165 lb. turnip. It is my desire that you, my readers, friends, acquaintances, and most especially, my enemies and rivals, should participate in bearing witness to my final wishes.

Also, I would like to thank Susan Paxton at An Age Like This (another Orwell reference) for providing this living will. I have made a few modifications for my particular circumstances.

If you would like to be a witness, please avail yourselves of the comment section.

A Living Will

I, Barney Francis Patrick McClelland_ (fill in the blank), being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.

If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a cigarette, cup of coffee or a pint of Guinness (or, all three), it should reasonably be presumed that I am not going to get better.

When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my children, siblings, parents and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day. I would, however, encourage them to stop by the pub on the way home and have a pint in my honor.

Under no circumstances shall the members of Congress enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own damned business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and welfare of the millions of Americans who are not comatose.

Under no circumstances shall any political entity butt into this case. Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of Neanderthal rightwing politicians who could not pass ninth-grade biology if they had the answer sheet in their hands.

I do not care how many fundamentalist wing nut votes these smarmy charlatans are trying to scrounge up for their run for the presidency in 2008, it is my wish that they play politics with someone else's life and leave me the hell alone to die in peace.

I do not give a tinker’s dam if a million semi-literate home-schooled religious zealots send grammatically incorrect and misspelled e-mails to legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I do not know these people, and I certainly have not authorized them to preach and crusade on my behalf. What I can say with all certainty is that I do not like them while I am conscious, and it is therefore reasonable to assume that my disposition towards them will not improve while I am in a vegetative state. They, too, should mind their own damned business.

If any member of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a political cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and haunt them until the end of their days.

___Barney Francis Patrick McClelland___
Signature


Witnessed below on this _31st_ day of _March , 2005