Terri Schiavo

The Boston Herald

The tape they keep playing on TV in which Terri Schiavo appears to be smiling, the tape that television is so in love with, hurts to watch.

My mother was like Terri. She too was in a ``vegetative state,'' a phrase I hate because it's a lie and a condescension like ``idiot'' and ``imbecile'' - words that the medical profession used to use but gave up years ago.

It's time they give up this too. People are not vegetables.

Terri is a 41-year-old woman who plateaued in her recovery long ago. She remains alive because of a feeding tube that was inserted to sustain her until she could sustain herself 

This never happened.

Two-and-a-half months into her coma, my mother's hands were curled, her feet turned in, her eyes shut tight. But then they fluttered and a few weeks later they opened. Her head was sunken and shaved on one side. Her skin was dry and tight and her mouth was open and she was thin, but swollen, too. If a camera had filmed her then, it might have caught what I see in Terri's eyes. Not hope. Not understanding. Not fear. Not ``What happened?'' or ``Why?’'

But it would have caught life - just life, dependent on tubes and turns and constant care. But still a heart was beating, a soul was still in place.

One step forward, two steps back. That's how my mother progressed. She was never really well again, never the same. But eventually she came home.

Fifteen years is a long time to be unresponsive. And it's a long time to hope. How much does Terri understand? How much does she feel? What does she think? DOESshe think?

“Do you remember any of it?'' I would ask my mother sometimes. She had to relearn everything. How to sit. How to hold up her head. How to talk and walk and feed herself. “No,’' she always said.

Terri's parents have been amazing. That's what rivets us. That they want her any way they can have her. That they still believe their daughter can get well. 

But can she? And is the ability to get well the criteria for sustaining a life?

Her husband and friends insist she wouldn't want to live this way. Her parents and siblings disagree. Courts and judges and priests and pols have all intervened. Everyone has an opinion.

But the only opinion that matters is Terri's. And she didn't write down what intervention she'd choose.

Government has stepped in where it doesn't belong. And the media has turned another tragedy into a circus: See the brain-damaged woman. Watch her family fight. Stay tuned for how a judge rules.

I never asked my mother whether we made the right decision by keeping her alive. ``If she lives she'll be a vegetable,'' the doctor said. We fought for her to live anyway. That's what people do. But is it always the right thing to do?