After Terri

One of the most astonishing things about the human experience is the realisation that loved ones die… We see other humans on the street and in the shops and marvel that they manage to simply go about their business — that there is no constant, universal primal scream in the face of such an awful fact. That level of grief seldom brings out the noblest emotions… In the case of Terri Schiavo, the whole world witnessed what happens when that natural emotional frailty is taken captive by politics…

What little we know about Terri Schiavo — the person, as opposed to the videotape — tells us that she would have been appalled by the last weeks of her life. What worse nightmare could a rather shy and affectionate young woman conjure up than 15 years of lingering unconsciousness, in which the entire globe became intimately familiar with the sight of her wasted limbs while the people she loved most engaged in a vicious court fight for control of her body…?

But worst of all were the powerful people who looked at the world we live in today, in which politics is about maximising hysteria at the margins, and concluded that the Schiavo fight was a win-win — for everyone but the people who actually cared about the dying woman. Today, finally, there is a moment of consensus. Rest in peace, Theresa Marie.

Excerpted from an editorial in the ‘New York Times’, April 1