My spouse Thea is not the type to be overtly political. She did vote last November, the first time she did so in many years. She reads the news but generally feels that there is little she, or anyone else, can do to change the situation. I've been trying to gently persuade Thea that we need to take more action to reverse our country's course, but sometimes in my passion I come off a little shrill and we wind up arguing. (I can hear her scoffing now--"HA! 'Gently'? 'A
little'?!?" Ah, but such is love....)
But while many issues require her numbness to cope, the Terry Schiavo case has driven Thea to tears, and more, to words.
She was lucky to barely arrive at the hospital to witness her own father's passing away, and reading how
another woman was deprived of the same chance because of the protestors outside Terry Schiavo's hospice broke her heart. With tears running down her face and her voice quavering she decried those protestors and Schiavo's parents, as well as any politician that would try to gain politically by trying to keep Terry's body alive.
I encouraged her to write down her thoughts. At first she resisted, as her arthritic hands often hurt when typing at length. But then she decided to type her words anyhow, and asked me to share them with the DailyKOS readership. Her words follow:
I am filled with rage and pain as I read about families unable to be with loved ones in their death because of the hullaballoo outside of Terry Schiavo's hospice.
Inside this hospice their are families who have made the same painful decision that Michael Schiavo had to make. Feeding tubes have been removed, machines switched off. Daughters have sat at their fathers bedsides and pushed that button for the morphine drip repeatedly - knowing that the drug would hasten their fathers death but realizing the release from pain was a gift and that the inevitable fact of death could not be denied no matter how much wishing and hoping.
I read of a woman in a wheelchair with a megaphone shouting "We're disabled, not disposable!" and "Terri is a person, not a vegetable!" If Mrs. Schiavo were able to articulate that thought then yes, it would be germane to this situation. But we are not talking a disability here, we are talking brain death. No, Terri Schiavo is not a vegetable. She is a side of beef.
Terry Schiavo will be dead soon and her parents will grieve. And they will probably simmer in their 15 minutes of fame and then slip into obscurity feeling their daughter was murdered. Their grief will FINALLY become a private issue, as it should have remained. They will finally have to let go. And there will be families that will also grieve in private and a part of their pain will be in knowing that they were unable to say goodbye and gently usher their beloved family member to the other side. Ten years from now there will be a news article commemorating Terry Schiavo's death and we will all shake our heads and mutter something about a "media circus". And the family members of the other people dying in the hospice this week will remember these events in a different way.
I pray for their comfort.
My take is that those who protest against the removal of Terry Schiavo's feeding tube are not, as they might claim, "pro-life." Rather, they fear death. If they valued life, they would be able to judge when keeping a vegetative body viable would deny others their right to life or to comfort in death. Mrs. Schiavo's organs could, if functional, save a life--maybe more. Her bed could hold a person whose life is ending and who wishes for a modicum of dignity and comfort. Her parents' energies could be spent helping the living, perhaps by counselling bulimics, or providing support for others who have had the experience of a loved one's brain death. The money used to keep Terry Schiavo's body viable could have fed the hungry or lifted up the lives of those pressed down by their existence. Instead, all this time, energy, and resources--not to mention political capital--are being spent to prevent Terry's parents from having to confront death.
To choose life is to accept the inevitability of death, at least in physical form. May Terry Schiavo's parents eventually reach this wisdom.
And once Thea gets home, I think I should hold her, and let her know I am proud of her for speaking up.
