Anna Quindlen - The Culture of Each Life

The Culture of Each Life
There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love is to force them to live.

By Anna Quindlen
Contributing Editor
Newsweek

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Arguments about Terri's case centered on something described as a "culture of life." It is an empty suit of a phrase, absent an individual to give it shape. There is no culture of life. There is the culture of your life, and the culture of mine. There is what each of us considers bearable, and what we will not bear. There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays.

There are two different opinions about what the culture of her own life meant to Terri Schiavo. Her husband, Michael, insisted that, like many other Americans, she expressed a strong wish not to be kept alive by extraordinary measures. Her parents said they did not believe that was true, that they wanted her feeding tube kept in and her care transferred to them. One measure of how topsy-turvy this story became was the constant suggestion that Terri's husband should simply accede to the desires of his in-laws, as though that would be a good thing instead of a gutless betrayal. My own husband knows that I never want artificial means to keep me alive. What an insult to my memory and our marriage it would be if he opted out when the going got rough and permitted others to salve their heartbreak by maintaining a shadow of my self.

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Many of us feel the way she does. Once the feeding tube was removed, polls showed that the majority of Americans believed Terri Schiavo should be allowed to die. That's probably because they've been there. They are the true judges and lawmakers and priests. They've been at the bedside, watching someone they love in agony as cancer nipped at the spine, as the chest rose and fell with the cruel mimicry of the respirator, as the music of personality dwindled to a single note and then fell silent. They know life when they see it, and they know it when it is gone.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7305204/site/newsweek/