LETTERS: CELEBRATING LIFE IN HARD TIMES

To the editor:

Earl Appleby Jr. is director of Citizens United Resisting Euthanasia, and he lives in Berkely Springs, W.Va. He gave me permission to send this memoriam, which he wrote, to the newspaper, and I am very honored to do so:

"I remember watching old Western movies with my father as a boy. Whenever someone was buried, the black-garbed country preacher would remind those gathered by the graveside that `Dust thou are, and unto dust thou shall return.' Then he would intone that awesome blessing: `The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'

"I remember thinking it was a hard prayer for hard times.

"Years later, on Feb. 26, 1981, my father, Earl Edwin Appleby, had a heart attack in the intensive care unit of our local hospital. During resuscitation, his brain was not kept sufficiently oxygenated, and he entered into his life in a coma.

"It marked the beginning of some hard times for Dad and his family, times made unbearably hard, if not for Christ's abiding love, not by his medical challenges, but by the heartless cruelty of the lovers of death within the medical profession and the clergy.

"But hard times can be heroic times, and my father taught us from his knee that heroic measures are challenges, not options. He taught us by that most powerful of pedagogies: example, the witness of a life that bore its cross all the way to Calvary.

"Do not think my father's life at home with us in a coma was a disconsolated Via Dolorosa. It was, above all, a festival of life, celebrated each precious moment given Dad by God and given us by Dad. He was able to give his beloved wife Madeleine kisses even while in what was called a comatose state. The fact that were rare made them only the sweeter. Thorns are not the essence of the rose, but would its beauty bloom without them?

"My father was joined in the silent brotherhood of those in coma with Nancy Beth Cruzan. Sharing my sorrow at her impending starvation, I told a reporter that God had given us far more love than we could ever give him.

"`How did he give that love,' she asked. `Simply by living,' I replied. every day of my father's life in a coma was a selfless gift of love. It was the gift Nancy would have continued to give had she not been abandoned to the grave.

"`Could you not watch one hour with me?' asks Jesus. Sometimes we take out our stopwatch.

"But as Cruzan was a victim, my father was a faithful soldier who never for a moment deserted his post. He served at the call of his country in the war against Hitler and his genocidal evil. He served at the call of Christ the King against Hitler's philosophical and ethical heirs -- euthanasia Axis -- in the fight for life.

"On Sept. 23, 1990, at approximately 7:30 a.m., the divine commander-in-chief relieved his mortal soldier of his duty in this earthly post. He called his warrior home with those age-old words of welcome: `Well done, good and faithful servant. Because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.'

"My father's comrades-in-arms from Martinburg's VFW Post 896 fired their 21-gun salute over his flag-draped coffin. As they honored the old staff sergeant, a new Staff Sgt. Appleby, my brother Dwight David, on orders from Operation Desert Storm, stood with his wife Krista, my sister Claire-Lily and me at our mother's side.

"The timeless words of Latin from the lips of a priest who respects life and, therefore, death, Malachi Martin, committed my father's body to the consecrated ground and his soul to his maker and judge.

"As the solemn sounds of "Taps" died in the hills of West Virginia, we soldiers left behind were confident that God who is good (as Dad so often reminded us) knew far better than we that the old Army sergeant was a five-star general in the fight for life and life's Creator."

CHRISTINE STEPHENS

Cape Girardeau