Include Me Out

I've tried to avoid writing anything about the Terri Schiavo case because I feel that to do so is to invade the privacy of strangers. Beyond that, I find that no matter what I have written on the subject, I've managed to betray or misrepresent myself.

Now, Robert M. Jeffers has coaxed me into taking the plunge, by questioning whether one should assert that Ms. Schiavo's parents have forfeited their claims to our sympathy.

It's good timing. I actually said yesterday - for the first and only time - that I'd lost all sympathy with her parents. It wasn't really true, though, and I felt uncomfortable saying it. I've also argued - just as uncomfortably - that whatever made her an individual personality is completely gone. And although I think this is very probably true, to assert it without reservation is to betray feelings I'd prefer to rely on whether they're correct or not.

So far, the easiest way to resolve my mixed emotions has been to remind myself that the case is absolutely none of my business, except to the extent that it's been exploited and lied about by Republican jackals. And the question there is not whether there's some spark of being in Ms. Schiavo that's worthy of respect and protection - her husband and parents agree on that point, in their own ways - but whether a pack of dishonest, callous, hypocritical politicians has the legal or ethical or scientific standing to address the question in public or private.

So why did I say her parents had lost my sympathy? Part of it was mere aggrieved coarseness. There may be a few people out there who haven't been coarsened or hardened or made more prone to intolerance by the emotional discomforts of life in George W. Bush's America. But most of us, I fear, are stupefied by anger and grief a good deal of the time, and aren't as patient or intelligent as we might be.

When I was younger, I was instantly and often inconveniently empathic, even with "enemies"; nowadays, it often takes a bit of effort to put myself in other people's shoes. It may be more evidence that I've hardened, or it may be that I've stopped taking such feelings seriously, except in cases where they lead to worthwhile action. It's easy to feel - and to prattle about - connectedness and empathy, but language is no proof of anything that really matters. In cases where action is either impossible or unjustifiable, it seems like sheer narcissism to harp on how finely tuned one's sensibilities are.

And sometimes, sad to say, it's easy to take the path of least resistance. Otherwise, you have to figure out what you feel, and then you have to consider whether you can put it into words worth saying, and finally you have to wonder whether people will be willing or able to accept it, whether you express it clearly or not. Generally, I find it more bearable to be understood when I express something that I don't entirely believe, than to be misunderstood when I express something I believe passionately. This makes me prone to indirect or distancing language on the one hand, and overstatement on the other (for those who haven't noticed).

Anyway, whatever I think of the political aspects of this case - and the truth is that no act of political opportunism has ever shocked me more deeply - I think Ms. Schiavo's parents and her husband are both right, on a certain essential level. I marvel at the loyalty this woman has inspired: I marvel at her parents' unwillingness to let her go, and her husband's unwillingness to walk away from a situation that is painful - and now, dangerous - beyond all reckoning, in order to fulfill what he sees as his duty to her. Legally and medically speaking, Mr. Schiavo is clearly far more right than the parents are, given our current understanding of medicine and law. And to the extent the Schindlers have allied themselves with people who are demonstrably evil, I have to conclude that they're morally wrong, too. But one is certainly obliged to feel compassion for people who have been so warped by pain.

My mother, by the way, died five years ago today, partially because I gave up hope of saving her and had her life-support removed. Hers was an exceptionally ugly death...not in its specific physical details - though those were certainly unpleasant - but in her unwillingness to be reconciled to it. If nothing else, I learned from her last days to loathe the idiocy of Dylan Thomas's exhortation to "rage against the dying of the light." My mother raged and raged, and it resulted in nothing but unnecessary distance and irresolvable pain for all concerned.

These things happen, unfortunately. It was all very difficult, but for the most part it was also very private, as such things should be. The political ugliness of the Schiavo case is a very real issue, but that doesn't mean that everyone who's offended by it is competent to discuss the intimate emotional details of the relationships at the heart of the matter. The proper response to the ugliness of this situation is not to demonize the Schindlers, but to reiterate that this case is completely outside the jurisdiction of the court of public opinion.

(NOTE: In case it's not obvious, I wrote this before Ms. Schiavo's death, but was unable to post it.)