THIS IS SAD

People who are attempting to force the continuance of life support for Terri Schiavo are sad. I have absolutely zero sympathy for those who think that prolonging the life of someone in a persistent vegetative state is somehow a stand in favor of life, or a position that is required by human decency, a respect for God's creation, or what have you. In fact, to me such arguments are basically a refusal to admit that life ends, that we are naturally fragile creatures who have managed to figure out how to wrest a few more days, weeks, or years of some abstract existence from a nature that distributes both life and death to all of us. It is understandable, I suppose, that the parents hold out hope that their daughter could be revived. Understandable but sad. It is also understandable that the husband wants to try to give effect to what he understands to be the will of his former wife (she is no longer there, in fact, except in the imagination of people who loved her), even if he is clearly an interested party. The sadness in both cases arises from the situation itself. But to hitch one's political cart to this unfortunately paired team is pathetic. The second tragedy here is that some people have lost all sense of the shame involved in instrumentalizing the mysterious path of life and death for the purposes of inscribing some ringing (and perhaps well-meaning) slogan on the public list of their political commitments. Let it go.