Watching Terri’s tribute video brought it back in vivid detail. Strong memories, memories of darkness and horror.

Last March. It was a long time coming, and several times it seemed her life was spared; all that was needed was for the somewhere, someone in charge of something to come to thier senses. They would come to their senses; they just needed to be told it mattered. Tell them, help them to realize this is more than a theoretical situation– this is a woman’s life is being talked about. We thought it couldn’t happen, not in America. Starving dogs is illegal here. Starving people?

It was the eighteenth, while we were all on spring break. We could scarcely believe they had done it, and then we thought it would be for a few hours; a judge would give an emergency injunction, it would be replaced. We don’t starve people in America. I remember refreshing the page, refreshing, waiting for a change, waiting for good news….how long would it be?

And as the hours turned into days, and the days melted into each other, and our hopes rose with one hour and fell with the next. Our hearts were there in Florida with her, in the hospice that had become a torture chamber, a prison of death. Her mouth was parched, her lips bled. How angry I was when they made those stupid arguments for “mercy-killing”. Come, shoot her then! That would be far more merciful. Starving is not a humane way to kill anyone–ask any of those who took part in the hunger strike, drinking only water.

Classes began again, and we were back in our dorms. Nobody cared. Oh, something on the news, we saw at home, maybe. Well, govenment shouldn’t get involved in family issues. People, do you know what is happening in Florida right now?

Yes, after three days without food you don’t feel hungry– but far worse. It was so, so easy to get dehydrated, but we made ourselves drink water; it was the only thing keeping us alive. If we forgot for a few hours the poisins built up. But she didn’t have water. They refused to give her the ice chip that might have soothed the pain in her mouth. The brave children who tried to bring in a small cup were stopped by the police.

The rest is a haze; weakness from lack of food, helplessness in the face of the awful injustice. She is keeping on; oh people, she is fighting so hard, can’t you give her a chance at life? Look, no-one can live without food and water, not even you! This is not “letting her die”. This is killing.

That every one of those who made that decision could have taken its consequences onto themselves, keeping away from food and water! They would have realized quickly what it was that they were doing. But no, they sat down to full tables.

We hoped on till the end. 12 days, 12 days of horror. Every door was turned to, but everyone we might have trusted failed us. When it ended it was, in spite of everything, a release; the awful suffering over. Why did God allow it? But now he was comforting her.

The stain is still on us now; the stain of murder. An innocent woman was murdered in a nursing home, in America. But it was not one of those murders that happened because no one knew, because no one was there to defend. We were there; we stood and watched, and allowed it to happen.

We lost our naivite, the bright ideal of America we had lived with till that time. These things do happen, and they will happen, unless someone stands in the gap. And standing in the gap is more than saying it’s bad, saying it shouldn’t happen.

We gained an awful, terrible determination; her death was a wake up call; and cemented in us now is the pain of those days– when she waited, and no-one came.

It happened. In America. Will it happen again?

Haleigh Poutre. Charlotte Wyatt. Baby MB.

We won’t fail them, too?