Passion Play

And then there was passion.

Easter was yesterday. The lilies bloomed, the faithful worshiped, and on the all-news-all-the-time cable channels, pundits pundited. It was the case of the passion of Terri Schivo and people have taken to the cause like the penitent to communion wine.

The lessons to be learned in this situation are numerous: consider drafting a living will; clearly communicate your wishes about quality of life with your loved ones; don’t stick your collective congressional actions into a venue that is clearly private as a political issue, lest the electorate perceive you as “politically motivated”.

The part that really boggles my mind, however, is that her method of death is the removal of a feeding tube, a slow and gradual attempt at starvation with the goal of gaining some existential control over death. The reason Ms Schiavo is in her compromised state may be largely due to her history of an eating disorder, a slow and gradual attempt at starvation with the goal of gaining some existential control over life. Yes, Virginia, there is irony. And there’s plenty of it to go around. There’s also the irony of the fight for life coinciding with Easter weekend, a time of redemption and resurrection for Christian faithful. To say nothing of the larger irony of woman who was painfully shy and certainly not comfortable in any kind of spotlight being turned into a national media figure.

So wherefore all the hoopla? Why the insistence that one course of life is right and another course (or lack thereof) is wrong? The tragedy here is the corruption of a woman’s life, through her family, her elected officials and through herself. All sides find themselves adhering to strict credo, be it an insistence on the sanctity of any life, the insistence of the right to die with dignity, or the insistence that you can try to gain political points towards your future by rushing an emergency bill before congress at 12:30 in the morning and taking it to the president to sign in his PJs an hour later.

For the observant, I’m obviously not a fan of congressional action in this case. That in itself is strange for me, being someone who feels that a strong central government is a good thing and that the Union is more important than the State. The reason this is not a time for superseding action is because this women, this victim of the failure of her own better angels, has yet to live a single day for herself in her life. She has gone from being controlled by her family to be controlled by her inner psyche to be controlled by a life-sustaining machine.

I can understand why Ms Schiavo’s parents want to keep her in the world. What I don’t understand is why they are using their daughter to keep themselves alive. They are as dependent upon her as she is upon her now-absent feeding tube. The value they place on their daughter’s life goes beyond just filial devotion and has extended into need. The removal of their life support would create a heartache that they can’t comprehend.

We are all terrified of heartache, for good reason. No one wants to be enslaved by pain, so we go to great lengths to avoid that pain or try to correct it. And those of us on the outskirts of the painful event without any real influence to what happens can do nothing but stand by and watch, feeling helpless and superfluous. We want to the world to be a good place. We want everyone to be okay, to have shelter, sustenance and love. We want that no one should be long separated from their loved ones, that no one should have to walk through any part of life alone.

What we, all of us be it insider or outsider, have to realize is that life is at least in part defined by loss. We measure our distance traveled by the obstacles we’ve overcome. Our moments of gladdest grace come when we make it through hardship, bruised but not beaten. And the lucky ones wear their dents, scars and imperfections with honor. The parents of Ms Schiavo have come to a place where they are being asked to give up their life support, their daughter. That sacrifice is the only thing that will help them to move beyond the issues that have led to this misfortune.

And thus, I advocate for Terri Schiavo to be allowed to die. Her husband has come to a place where he feels this is the best thing to do. Obviously her parents have not. I realize that what I am asking of them is enormous.

I’m not a parent. I know many parents would tell me that I have no concept of the devotion that a parent feels for a child until I am in that position myself, and I don’t doubt them on that assertion for one moment. So in that light, what I’ve said about their family no doubt sounds horribly uninformed and heartless. What I can testify to, however, is that parents’ motivations are not always innocent and not all parents have only their child’s best intentions at heart.

The sacrifice of this Easter season is not Terri Schiavo. The sacrifice is her parents’ need for her. And that is the true passion play.