In Memoriam
Celebrating Life in Hard Times
by Earl E. Appleby, Jr.
I remember watching the 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 art 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 February 26, 1981, my father, Earl Edwin Appleby, had a heart attack in the intensive care unit of our
local hospital. During his resuscitation, his brain was not kept sufficiently oxygenated and he entered into his life in coma.
It marked the beginning of some hard times for Dad and for 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 on 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 coma was a disconsolate Via Dolorosa. It was, above all, a festival
of life, celebrating 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 they 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 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?" Jesus asks. 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--the euthanasia Axis--in the fight for life.
On 23 September 1990 at approximately 0730 hours, 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 Martinsburg's VFW Post 896 fired their twenty-one gun salute over his flag-draped coffin. As
they honored the old staff sergeant, a new Staff Sergeant Appleby, my
brother Dwight David, on orders for Operation Desert
Storm, stood watch with his wife Krista, my sister Claire-Lilly, 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.
Earl E. Appleby, Jr., director of Citizens United Resisting Euthanasia (CURE), lives in Berkeley Springs, W. Va.
National Catholic Register, March 10, 1991
