Watching Terri Schiavo die has reminded me of the lives of saints. How often do saints suffer and die at the hands of authorities determined to kill them? In their suffering, however, they work miracles. In Terri’s case I can already attest to one miracle: me.
Terri’s suffering has opened my heart to the absoluteness of life. In her suffering I’ve drawn new lessons from the people around me who have suffered, even died. My father’s final illness and subsequent passing (the first anniversary is coming up this May 30th) has been a potent well-spring of life lessons. Terri’s suffering has only drawn out richer meaning to some of those lessons.
My father maintained his dignity even through his suffering, and his last 48 hours of life were difficult, very difficult. I could see his fear, and hear his desperate breaths. It was not a beautiful death, but he faced it with courage. My mother was the only one in the room to see him take his last breath. I think he waited for the rest of his family and friends to leave the room. I think he knew it would upset us, especially me. He would have never wanted to upset me.
The way my father faced his death was his last and his greatest lesson to me, and it made me understand the absoluteness of death. It's not a "right" like the "right-to-die" ghouls would have you believe. Death is not lifestyle choice like a pilates class schedule, and we shouldn't be so quick to deal it out like it is a choice. You don't choose to die. It just happens. And it will happen.
Before Terri, it was easy for me to judge a person’s worth because I live in relative prosperity surrounded by all the accoutrements of a rich and powerful city. I could be as careless as anyone else in my judgements about hating to see people "suffer." I could even support first-term abortions as a politically viable option to the pro-life movement’s absolutes.
Not anymore. Watching Terri’s creepy husband whimper at the thought of federal scrutiny in this case, “My right to privacy is being violated!” and reading the “She’s a vegetable, kill her!” comments all over the blogosphere have only reinforced the blatant ugliness of the culture of death. Here you have a husband who wants the public to sanction the taking of his wife’s life, while he frets over the threat of public scrutiny. Here you have people who see even the slightest discomfort or the threat of suffering as a signal for the tubes to be pulled.
When it comes to life, my days of nuance are over. Where there is no written declaration, kinsman opposition, or contradiction in diagnosis, the law should always err on the side of life. A woman who responds to voices, opens her eyes, smiles, vocalizes, and has enough of a brain to move both the lungs and the heart on their own, is not a vegetable, folks. I don’t know what she is, but she is not a living corpse. Starving her to death is not the answer to her suffering.
Suffering people demand a lot from us. They need to be touched and spoken to. They need to washed and cared for. They need our time, not for ourselves, but for them. They demand that we empty ourselves of all the ego and neuroses and insecurities for just a little while. They remind us of the fragility of our own lives and the inevitability of death, the one thing we know we have no control over. Suffering people cramp our style, and that’s why so many people recoil from them.
They recoil from saints, too. Saints are saints because they suffered. The suffering transformed them. It strips bare the frivolous material world, and leaves only the Truth. It draws their hearts and minds to the only things that matter, and gives them a special wisdom unbound by time or place.
Their deaths -- whether noble like Joan of Arc’s or quiet like John of the Cross’ passing – do not signify the end of their influence. Indeed, men like Thomas More have a more potent influence over the centuries than any meager act he performed in life. The drama of his life like many saints is a drama of Truth to power, and suffering at the hands of an authority determined to kill him. St Thomas was killed after a drawn out legal battle that ended only after testimony was falsified. Among his conspirators none are remembered outside of academic and theological circles, save Henry VIII. Their lives are not influential. Their time came and went quickly. Saint Thomas lives on.
And so it will be with Terri. Regardless of how she lived her life before her suffering, she has worked a miracle through her suffering. She has drawn back the veils of pretension and selfishness, and she now demands we make a choice, the only choice that matters: Life or Death.
Thanks, Terri. I understand now. I choose Life.
