The Least Among Us
Unless there is a last minute intervention from Florida's Legislature or Congress, Terri Schiavo will stop being fed on Friday, and within days will be starved to death.
Those who would kill her, former husband Michael Schiavo and his lawyers, say that Terri does not want to live, and that she is trapped in a useless body with no hope of living a productive life. She will die because of a single comment to her husband, never repeated to another or written down. They claim she told her husband, once, in private, that she would not wish to linger on life support or in a comatose state. Every court that has heard this claim has accepted it, and those who wish to keep Terri alive have exhausted every legal avenue to no avail. Hearsay evidence, which would not be accepted in any trial court, or before any other probate judge, will be used to justify her slow and painful death.
But Terri is not on life support, and she is certainly not in a fully comatose state. From the pictures I have seen, and from testimony in court from her parents and specialists hired to defend her, she is aware of her surroundings, able to display emotion, able to feel pain, and responds to her environment. She seems to recognize familiar faces and people, especially her parents, and reacts differently to strangers. She orients to noises and activities in her room, and shows an anticipatory awareness of her schedule during the day. The only life support she requires is tube feeding, since her husband has never permitted therapy that might allow her to eat. Still, the courts and her killers maintain that she is in a "persistent vegetative state" and therefore of little value to herself or the world.
Her condition seems very familiar to me, and I am deeply troubled by this, because, you see, as a teacher in a high school class for those with severe handicaps, what the courts and lawyers call "persistent vegetative state", I call students.
Everyday, I teach kids who are no less disabled than Terri. They come to our classroom from parents who love them no less than any parent with a non-disabled child. Their disabilities require us to feed them through tubes, and to change them, and to clean them, and to put them into wheelchairs and standers and walkers. They have severe cognitive retardation and physical disabilities, vision and hearing deficits that render them legally deaf and blind, and communication may only be with sounds or tears or laughter. We measure success in small increments, over years, and even the smallest progress is an occasion for great satisfaction. During the day, we provide them with opportunities to feel, and taste and communicate and play, and to be with other kids just like any kid. We teach them to make choices by touching objects or with eye-gaze, to indicate yes or no with a movement or a motion, to move themselves in a supported walker, and to continue the transition from tube feeding to oral feeding. We teach them to use the toilet, and to press switches to turn on a tape player, and to trigger recorded messages that allow them to speak to their peers, and many other things.
In return, they show us courage, and strength and perseverance. And everyday, I thank God for what I have, and hope that I can be half as brave as they are, and I know they teach us more than we could ever teach them.
At the end of the day, we send them home to moms and dads who greet them with hugs and kisses and love, who look into that troubled body and brain and see a child whose value goes beyond being "productive", and whose worth is not based on what they can do, but who they are.
I often wonder if I could do what these parents do, living with the sheer labor of support such a child requires, to the exclusion of all other hopes and dreams and selfish desires. We only have our students for the school day, and then we all go home to our families. They have them for the rest of the time. And the rest of their lives. Our problems seem inconsequential in comparison.
Before I began to teach such students fifteen years ago, I wondered how God could let this happen, because there did not seem to be a purpose for such tragedy in the plan of a merciful and loving God. But I know now, as surely as anything, that my students (and others like them) are a test, and how we treat them determines our very humanity. Jesus Christ promised that how we treat the least among us will be how he remembers us. I hope that some of what I do everyday will please Him.
I do not know what will happen to Terri Schiavo. I pray that she will be saved. However, I cannot help but feel the weight of a great national test pressing down upon the shoulders of this country, as we begin to treat those deemed unproductive as disposable.
And, I cannot help but wonder if my students are next.
Those who would kill her, former husband Michael Schiavo and his lawyers, say that Terri does not want to live, and that she is trapped in a useless body with no hope of living a productive life. She will die because of a single comment to her husband, never repeated to another or written down. They claim she told her husband, once, in private, that she would not wish to linger on life support or in a comatose state. Every court that has heard this claim has accepted it, and those who wish to keep Terri alive have exhausted every legal avenue to no avail. Hearsay evidence, which would not be accepted in any trial court, or before any other probate judge, will be used to justify her slow and painful death.
But Terri is not on life support, and she is certainly not in a fully comatose state. From the pictures I have seen, and from testimony in court from her parents and specialists hired to defend her, she is aware of her surroundings, able to display emotion, able to feel pain, and responds to her environment. She seems to recognize familiar faces and people, especially her parents, and reacts differently to strangers. She orients to noises and activities in her room, and shows an anticipatory awareness of her schedule during the day. The only life support she requires is tube feeding, since her husband has never permitted therapy that might allow her to eat. Still, the courts and her killers maintain that she is in a "persistent vegetative state" and therefore of little value to herself or the world.
Her condition seems very familiar to me, and I am deeply troubled by this, because, you see, as a teacher in a high school class for those with severe handicaps, what the courts and lawyers call "persistent vegetative state", I call students.
Everyday, I teach kids who are no less disabled than Terri. They come to our classroom from parents who love them no less than any parent with a non-disabled child. Their disabilities require us to feed them through tubes, and to change them, and to clean them, and to put them into wheelchairs and standers and walkers. They have severe cognitive retardation and physical disabilities, vision and hearing deficits that render them legally deaf and blind, and communication may only be with sounds or tears or laughter. We measure success in small increments, over years, and even the smallest progress is an occasion for great satisfaction. During the day, we provide them with opportunities to feel, and taste and communicate and play, and to be with other kids just like any kid. We teach them to make choices by touching objects or with eye-gaze, to indicate yes or no with a movement or a motion, to move themselves in a supported walker, and to continue the transition from tube feeding to oral feeding. We teach them to use the toilet, and to press switches to turn on a tape player, and to trigger recorded messages that allow them to speak to their peers, and many other things.
In return, they show us courage, and strength and perseverance. And everyday, I thank God for what I have, and hope that I can be half as brave as they are, and I know they teach us more than we could ever teach them.
At the end of the day, we send them home to moms and dads who greet them with hugs and kisses and love, who look into that troubled body and brain and see a child whose value goes beyond being "productive", and whose worth is not based on what they can do, but who they are.
I often wonder if I could do what these parents do, living with the sheer labor of support such a child requires, to the exclusion of all other hopes and dreams and selfish desires. We only have our students for the school day, and then we all go home to our families. They have them for the rest of the time. And the rest of their lives. Our problems seem inconsequential in comparison.
Before I began to teach such students fifteen years ago, I wondered how God could let this happen, because there did not seem to be a purpose for such tragedy in the plan of a merciful and loving God. But I know now, as surely as anything, that my students (and others like them) are a test, and how we treat them determines our very humanity. Jesus Christ promised that how we treat the least among us will be how he remembers us. I hope that some of what I do everyday will please Him.
I do not know what will happen to Terri Schiavo. I pray that she will be saved. However, I cannot help but feel the weight of a great national test pressing down upon the shoulders of this country, as we begin to treat those deemed unproductive as disposable.
And, I cannot help but wonder if my students are next.
posted by Mark Outland at 7:33 PM
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