Choosing endings

Everybody's talking about Terri Schiavo. I don't feel qualified to argue about whether or not her husband should be allowed to remove her feeding tube. Like so many issues, science is changing what we know about the subject on a fairly regular basis, and in the meantime we're left to make decisions with the information we have. She may have some brain function, she may not. If she does, we don't know the nature of it.

The most thought-provoking idea I've heard this week on the subject is that living wills can be justifiably ignored, due to the fact that a person in a vegetative or unresponsive state may think differently (if capable of thought) after an accident than he or she did when the will was signed. This isn't exactly germane in this case, since there was no living will. But to what extent do our past decisions govern our future? How much should we allow them to?

If I decided today to sign a living will and ten years down the road I was injured and subject to its terms, what if I changed my mind and couldn't let anyone know? My past decision would have an influence (not the only one) on my future. In the same way, when a singer signs a recording contract or people get married, they are making binding decisions that will affect their future lives. The difference is in the ability to break those contracts. When a marriage ends, there is pain but also opportunity to recover.

In Terri Schiavo's case, we'll never know what she wants, if she still has the capacity to want anything at all. If she had, as Tom DeLay put it, "specifically written instructions in her hand, with her signature", we still wouldn't know what she wants now that she's faced with her current existence. All we can do is put our trust in others to do what they think is right, and show them enough of ourselves for them to make that judgment for us. Just another reason to choose carefully who you share this existence with.