Beliefnet.com published an article yesterday by Lisa Schamess on the Terri Schiavo controversy. Schamess lost her husband to cancer and faced some of the same end of life decisions faced by the Schivao family. The huge difference is that her husband was able to make some of those decisions on his own. In her article she asks that we put aside the political consequences of the story and remember something more personal about this issue:

There were times—many times—well before the fight was over, that I bundled the baby in her bouncy seat downstairs so I could go upstairs to administer Gil’s medications, and I thought to myself, “Let it end, let it end, this isn’t a life at all.” There were times I really wished I could leave. Other times, especially at the end, all I wanted was one more day, one more conversation with Gil, even the slightest hint of a normal moment, and I would have traded any amount of suffering for it.

And so we the surviving, the caretaking, the huddled circle in vigil, we rage at each other, we argue and manipulate and bring up old hurts. We fight to be the one who knows a loved one’s wishes, the one who loves the best. It’s not pretty. Mostly, we try to see what we want to see: life as permanent and safe, as an unmitigated blessing, as a gift to which all other concerns should be sacrificed. We want this person to live, to live among us, to stay. Or we want to preserve our memories of better times, not face the living corpse stretched out in a hospital bed, put an end to the mockery of life that trauma has visited on us. Tube in or tube out, we are all of us pro-life.

So if I’d been faced with the choices Terri’s family has had to make, if Gil hadn’t been alert and clearly in a terminal condition, if the decision were left to me and to his parents, what would we have done?

And now, as the mother of a thriving six-year-old, a woman who has chosen to be a wife again, and a stepmother, what would I do if it was my little girl, if she seemed to see me, to know my voice, to feel my fingers in her hair?

I actually see great bravery and great love in both sides of the battle. None of Terri’s family has walked away from their responsibility to her. The tragedy is in the vast difference between them, and in the inability to reach Terri herself, to ask her: Do you want to stay?

On this day where Terri Schivao has died let us offer prayers for her and all her family.  May there be reconciliation between those left behind.

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