Pessimistic Politics: Terri Shiavo - Another Person Who Made a Difference

Seven days before this article was written, a historical legal battle came to its conclusion when Terri Shiavo passed away on March 31st at 9:05 AM. You all know the story, but for those who are in the dark, it centered around Terri, a woman who suffered severe brain damage from cardiac arrest. The legal battle raged to a national level between Michael Shiavo, Terri’s husband, and Terri’s parents, the Schindlers, over whether or not they should keep Terri alive. Drama ensued, allegations were made, the nation divided, and a new fiasco was born.

First, let’s talk about the incident itself. Believe it or not, this incident started way back in 1990, when Terri had her cardiac arrest. Michael is declared Terri’s legal guardian, and a malpractice suit awards them one million dollars. The legal battle picked up in 1993, when Michael and the Schindlers had a falling out, and the parents tried and fail to get legal custody of Terri. In 1998, Michael petitions the court of have her feeding tube removed. From there, a long series of battles and pleadings carry on, during which Terri’s tube was removed and replaced, lots of doctors argued about whether or not she was in a vegetative state, and the parent’s attempted to get Terri and Michael divorced. We all know the end result: her feeding tube was removed on March 18, 2005 and she died thirteen days later.

Michael’s justification for letting her die was she never wanted to be kept alive by “artificial means.” He also believed that she would never recover and would be better off relieved from her suffering. Her parents firmly believed that she never wanted this and desperately wanted her to be kept alive. I don’t blame them; she was their baby.

But I think both sides can be accused of being morons in the matter. I’m certain both sides loved Terri very much; why else would they each go through all of the burden of deciding her fate? I think that’s something that’s been lost in this entire matter: this was not done out of spite, but rather love. It’s just that both sides had different ideas of what this “love” was, exactly.

I think that Michael may have had a better case. Personally, I don’t know what I would do if I were in his shoes. Letting your own wife who you love die? I can’t accept that as being easy. However, why did she have to be starved to death? Okay, this was probably not his decision, but I think it would be more humane to kill her instantly over slowly starving her to death. But I’m sure this decision was firmly based in the law of the land, which was written by people, who, I established, are naturally idiots.

On the other side, we have Terri’s parents, who, you’ll have to forgive my bluntness, seem to be very selfish about the matter. I heard a sound bite once about the case where they apparently argued that they wanted to keep her alive to enjoy being with her. What is she, some kind of doll who now solely exists for their amusement? I know there was a lot more to it than that, but if the poor woman is never going to recover, why put off the inevitable?

In their defense, there was a lot of red tape in the matter. Some doctors (I should point out THEIR doctors) insisted she could be rehabilitated, but I think there’s more to the issue here. What, exactly, was it like to be like Terri Shiavo for the last fifteen years? Was she happy? Was she suffering? Was much of anything going on in her mind? Just what do those we deem “mentally handicap” actually see? Is it suffering, bliss, or just another perspective?

Whatever the case, this incident spurred a lot of paranoid people to scurry to the notaries to help ensure that this wouldn’t happen to them. The living will suddenly became a necessity. Two people I work with immediately went to get their wills notarized so there would be no question of their wishes should something like this happen to them. It’s no longer a simple matter of dying and getting buried. Like all things, death is a lot more complicated these days.

I think Terri’s case shows that we think of death as an undeniably bad thing. In the midst of terrible agony and sorrow, humans generally want to live no matter what. We fear death very much, probably because we don’t know what death is. Yeah, there’s a lot of religious debate on it (the kind of debate that this site snacks on), but let’s face facts: no sane person wants to die.

So we’ve concocted the idea that anything is better than dying, and it’s this very notion that Michael Shiavo was going against. Was Terri better off dead than alive? No one can say. I would like to think that there was no more “living” for Terri to do, but since we’re a species with too much fear, an odd sense of compassion, and not enough knowledge, it’s impossible to say which choice was “right.” If I had to choose, I would support Michael, but I see the Schindlers’ reasoning clearly, too.

I think what we can all agree on is that this case should have stayed out of the mass media’s prying eyes. Leave it to a Bush to cause more trouble than necessary and open the floodgate for all kinds of copycats who believe that they have a case that somewhat resembles Terri’s. If we can agree on anything, I think it’s the belief that there never should have been such a media uprising corrupting such a highly personal matter.

It really goes to show that people aren’t miserable enough with their own lives, since they seem to have this powerful urge to butt into the misery of others. It’s one thing for the in-laws to call you a murderer, but having half of the nation likening you to Osama bin Laden really makes you second guess whether what you’re going is right.

In a way, though, I think this media frenzy dredged up a situation that disproves the scathing allegations that Michael wanted to kill Terri for the money she would have left behind (insurance, if what I heard is correct). I believe Michael was offered a million dollars to keep her alive, yet he refused it. Anyone can probably make up some argument to disavow the presence of good intentions with this decision, but I think it’s more likely that Michael stuck to his guns because he loved her. To that effect, I have to support his decision for his integrity, if nothing else. It just seems like he took the higher ground on this one, since the other side did resort to passionate name-calling and bribery. I’m not trying to demonize either side here, but from a logical stand point, Michael seemed to be right. Maybe I can be proven wrong here, but with the evidence I have, that’s my judgment, for what it’s worth.

So what have we learned from all of this? One thing, of course, is to make sure we have some way to speak our wishes if we can no longer do so. If we don’t, it may create trouble for the people who love us, because everyone has their own definition of love and ways to show it. In this case, a living will can allow everyone to know for certain how we wish them to show us love if we can’t communicate this desire directly.

We need to appreciate what we have, because we never know when it will all be taken away. Although I can’t say for certain what was going on through Terri’s head over the last decade and a half, this uncertainty is what brought such suffering to two families. If it would have been better for Terri to die, then her parents could make peace with that fact and let her go. If it would have been better to let her live, Michael wouldn’t have had to make such an impossible decision that resulted in no winners. They didn’t know, and all the two parties can really do is believe that they were right the entire time.

The final lesson is to not tell the media anything. Some good did come out of it, but mostly this incident created anything topic for the nation to fight over. I don’t want to sound unsympathetic here, but there are worse things going on in the country and the world than this. Yet because the results of this case could affect everybody and Jed Bush thought it would be neat to raise hell about it, we all found a family’s personal fight in everyone’s living room.

One of these days, the media is going to get so bored that they’re going to broadcast a story about someone’s constipation, and the nation will divide itself on whether or not the poor soul should use Ex-lax or wait it out, and you know this debate would be very bitter. This is because we’re a nation of opinionated peons who form views about things that we don’t understand. Not all of us have websites, however.

My sympathy goes out to Terri’s entire family. I know you loved her very much, why else would you have put yourselves up on the chopping block of American opinion? I can only hope you can find peace in the horror of the last fifteen years and can live your lives, because there’s a lot of living to do.