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 The modern mercy death By Suzanne Fields March 24, 2005 Death
is a complicated process that sometimes tiptoes into the body, speaking
in whispers, barely audible, quiet as a Buddha in meditation. At
other times death is the circus come to town, accompanied by clowns
running and jumping and tumbling, beating drums, promising celebration
and a noisy wake of drunken voices prepared to mourn with memories animated
by laughter, tears and sparkling water drowned in whiskey. Emily
Dickinson likens death to a courteous ride in a horse-drawn carriage:
"Because I could not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me."
The poet describes the manners and civility that surround a process
requiring solemnity and style. She reflects on mortality with respect
for the dying and tender consideration for those left behind. Terri
Schiavo has not been so fortunate. She's caught in turbulence, jostled
by men and women with suspect motives, staying alive in the twilight
zone. Outsiders come and go, commenting on her bedridden body as though
she were merely a specimen on the medical examiner's table. Journalists,
unlike poets or philosophers, rarely grapple with the profundities of
death, compelled by the limits of time and space to reduce tragedy to
data, but this time we're awash in talk of epic proportions, scratching
our chins and furrowing our brows trying to sound sage. We search religious
and literary texts to help us to a Solomonic decision. Politics,
of course, is always with us, and there's grandstanding aplenty in the
teasing out of fact and "factoid" to reinforce ideological,
moral and legal interpretation. The most disturbing remarks of all are
aimed by the arrogantly skeptical at the religious who regard the "sanctity
of life" as the most precious priority. I
find it hard to argue with the president. "In cases like this one,"
he said, signing the legislation giving Terri Schiavo one last, forlorn
chance to live, "where there are serious questions and substantial
doubts, our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption
in favor of life." I'm not a Catholic, but like the Vatican , I'm
saddened by the vulgarity of language that intrudes on this discussion:
"Who can decide to pull the plug as if we were talking about a
broken or out of order household appliance?" Questions
naturally emerge from moral and legal spheres, which taken together
are worthy of the arguments drawn by Sophocles in "Antigone,"
the ancient Greek tragedy that explores conflicts that arise when state
power is assumed to be greater than divine power, when a king takes
away the rights of a family to follow traditional burial rites. Did
Creon or Antigone have the better argument? The
moral issue in the Schiavo case is a simple one: Given the medical doubts
about Terri Schiavo's diagnosis, we must ask: Should any patient be
left to die without food and water when we are not absolutely, positively
sure that's what she would want? The legal issue, after 15 years in
a state court system that has sided with a husband seeking her death,
further requires us to ask whether it's right for the federal courts
to interfere with the courts of a state. Blurring
the known facts is the character of the husband. One fact, bluntly stated
in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, blinks on and off as if
written in neon: "It was not until 1993, after a medical-malpractice
jury awarded him roughly $1 million for Terri's long-term care, that
he began to seek his wife's death." Because
there are mixed medical opinions as to the absolute degree of her brain
damage and because her parents want to care for her at their own cost
in money and time, it's fair to ask questions about the motives of a
husband who wants to prevent Terri's parents from assuming her care
and protection, relieving him of her responsibility and enabling him
to move on with his new life. He becomes the weak link in the decision
making, complicated by the fact that he now has a "fiance"
with whom he fathered two children. German doctors determined
who was "unfit to live" in the Third Reich at the beginning
of the Nazi era, devising a long list of the mentally and physically
handicapped as well as the Jews and the gypsies. These agents of the
state decreed what they euphemistically called "mercy deaths"
for the incurable. No one stood vigilance outside the killing rooms.
Solomon,
I think, would have erred on the side of Terri Schiavo's devoted parents,
letting Emily Dickinson have the last word: "'Hope'"is the
thing with feathers — That perches in the soul — And sings the tune
without the words — And never stops at all."
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