The quality of mercy

Fact is always stranger than fiction. Many novelists actually scour newspapers to put a story together and actually state that despite the fact that the names and locations of the persons concerned are fictitious, the story-line is true; one of the most famous bestsellers that comes to mind being Truman Capote's masterpiece In Cold Blood. Many great films, like Million Dollar Baby, are based on true stories.

The controversy surrounding the slow and cruel death sentence pronounced on Terri Schiavo has moved the civilised world and it is inevitable that we will all have widely divergent opinions on the subject.

A husband who has won the right to "freedom" through the death of his wife who for 15 years has been merely existing will inevitably be criticised as will be her parents who have appealed to keep their daughter alive artificially. The decision is an extremely difficult and excruciating one.

Mrs Schiavo was unable to express herself. She was brain damaged. We, or anyone else for that matter, had no idea whether she actually knew what was happening. What I find so cruel is that instead of being given a merciful quick release from pain and, if she is in any way conscious, humiliation, she was slowly being starved to death; this to legally circumvent the mercy-killing from being called euthanasia and save other people's consciences. We are told by her husband that that is what she would have wanted; but how true is it? Is death by starvation merciful or is it a legal alternative to an injection in order to call the death a natural one? We will never know.

Medical science has advanced to such an extent that when a mere couple of decades back people like Mrs Schiavo would have died much sooner, today she can be kept alive indefinitely. As medical science progresses we are bound to have more and more of the same. Are we abusing of natural law? I will never presume to arrive at any conclusion myself but after reading what people like Andrew Azzopardi had to say last Thursday I cannot help thinking that there is something that does not add up. It simply cannot add up unless we believe in God as it is He alone who provides the counterweight to an illogical balance that we like to call the meaning of life.

As Catholics we are taught that we must prolong life as far as medical science is able to do so. We can do this because, as a general rule, we love the person in question and cannot get ourselves to part with him/her. Therefore many times we end up in an agonising, long drawn out struggle which is so devastating that in the end the bereaved are actually relieved that the loved one has finally died. It happens so many times and has in one way or another touched us all. What if there weren't any medical means of prolonging life? No feeding tubes and breathing machines, no drips and no morphine? Wouldn't the end be shorter and more merciful? We are taught that where there is life there is hope. Because of this we are part of a conspiracy to prolong life when there is none; till the time when the system cracks up under the strain of all the chemicals pumped into it. How many of you know of miraculous cures?

I have been to Lourdes so many times and have accompanied so many terminally ill people that I have lost count. There have been a couple of temporary remissions and release from pain that could be attributed to divine intervention coupled with faith but by and large what the Lourdes experience provides is a resignation to bear the pain and suffering brought on by the illness and a resignation to accept the final moment as it grows closer and closer. The Church is very reticent when it comes to recognising a miracle; in fact I was very surprised to learn that since the 1850s there have been fewer than 100 recognised cures in Lourdes. Because of situations like the Schiavo family one I can well understand why. Yet, people from all over the world, whether Christian or not, flock to the place in their millions every year, seeking the solace of faith in a tangible form. This is why Lourdes is one of those emotionally charged places on earth where the material world transcends into the spiritual and where lines of communication between heaven and earth are so strong that faith cannot be but strengthened.

As human beings we are all doomed to die. We don't know when or how; all we know is that it is an experience that must be borne. We don't like it at all and therefore that is why we believe in an afterlife simply because total cessation of one's existence is unacceptable. Our religion is based on this. Strictly speaking, according to our faith, we should look forward to death as the brief and merciful transition time when we will be transformed "in a twinkling of an eye" into spiritual beings free and unencumbered by hunger, sickness, depression and pain; and yet we cling to life with the tenacity of an abseiler! This is why putting someone out of misery and pain is so abhorrent to us and causes such unbearable, soul-searching pangs of conscience when, strictly speaking, we believe, or should, that the person whom we have released to a better world is in fact better off!

Instead, frail humanity lives in paranoid fear of death, surrounded by illness, pain and violence, till it finally gives up the ghost. Who knows what Mrs Schiavo herself may have thought about all this? If she could think that is. Who knows what all those people who watch helplessly as their loved ones gradually become unrecognisable wraiths of their former selves, totally dependent on artificial life supports, may think? It is a terrible ordeal which in one way or another we all have to endure; a painful decision that will haunt us persistently for the rest of our natural lives.

The ultimate paradox is that while the world holds its breath regarding the fate of one person, so many others are dying like flies without so much as a blink of reaction. The House of the Dying in Calcutta and the plague-like proportions of AIDS in Africa immediately spring to mind and I am sure that you will remember so many others as you try, along with me, to establish some sort of logic into the meaning of our brief and febrile lives in this illogical vale of tears.

Therefore before we pass absolute judgments on Mrs Schiavo's family, the judges and the doctors involved, we have to stop to think and put ourselves in their shoes. We may be in that same situation ourselves sooner than we know it.

kzt@onvol.net