A Matter of Life and Death

When it comes to death, there is really only one thing that need be said: we are afraid of it. Beyond afraid: we are terrified, more so than of any other thing we have to face. This is why, when you are really, really afraid of a horror film or a bungee jump, you say that you are "mortally terrified." Our fear of death is the fear against which we measure all other fears.

Why are we so afraid? Because, deep in our hearts, we worry that, when we die, there will be nothing else. Many people have strong convictions that make them tend to believe in some kind of afterlife, including me. However, doubt is an inevitable fact of human existence, and all of us, at some time, have asked ourselves the question, "What if this is all I get?" We hope that the thoughts and feelings we experience daily will go on in heaven, that death is just the undiscovered country...but because no one returns from death, we can't be sure. There are stories of people being clinically dead and then returning to life, having glimpsed some kind of bright light...and there is the story of Jesus Christ being resurrected. But still, we are skeptical. We can learn about Jesus and hold beliefs about him, but we didn't see it happen; we've never seen anyone resurrected. We can't be sure that the clinically dead people weren't just dreaming. We can't help but doubt.

When it comes to Terri Schiavo, who has been in a persistent vegetative state for fifteen years, people are very emotional because they see their own deaths when they look at her. Some people are definitely trying to use her for their own political advantage, but many other people look at her and worry about taking away her life, however diminished that life is.

Other people are equally as sure that it is time for Terri, after fifteen years, to be allowed to die. Her brain has been mostly destroyed and replaced by spinal fluid; she cannot speak or decide anything. Most of these people say something like, were they in a similar position, they would not want to be kept alive.

Her situation is not unique by any means, but because of circumstance she is on TV and she has Congresspeople arguing over her fate. And we all assume that it is our business, because, in a way, it is. We're all worried about death, after all. And what happened to this poor woman could happen to any of us.

But it is not our business, no matter how afraid we are. This is because the situation is so complex that no one except the people closest to it could possibly understand it. Are Terri Schiavo's parents just trying to get their hands on part of a medical malpractice settlement? Is her greedy husband trying to hold on to same? What about these duelling doctors; which one is correct, the one who says that Terri's life will never improve, or the one who says that someday, it might?

It has been said that everyone dies alone, but it's not always true. Sometimes you die alone, but sometimes you die surrounded by people who love you, or at least people who know you. It's more accurate to say that, when you die, you leave other people alone. The loneliness that we feel when people die is an intense, private emotion. We deal with it by having funerals and remembering.

It seems that we are all invited to Terri Schiavo's bedside, in what appear to be her final days. I'm not quite sure that her parents meant to invite us here when they sued to keep the feeding tube from being removed, but here we are. We're all in the room with her. Her parents and her husband get to stand closest to her bed, her doctors behind, but still close. The lawyers and the judges are behind the doctors. And behind them, the rest of us. These first three rows of people are arguing about what to do about Terri. The rest of us are arguing, too. The room is getting loud. The room is crowded.

Let's leave the room now. Let's stand outside, and let the people in the room decide what to do.