So the mourning for Terri Schiavo has begun.
Just don’t ask anyone on either side of her family to concur on the word’s definition. Like so many other words flung about in the bitter Schiavo vs. Schindler drama, its interpretation will differ drastically depending on who’s using it.
“Life,” “love,” “best interests” – the opposing camps so disagreed about the meaning of these words, it landed them in court 11 times over 15 years.
The meaning of “mourning,” I suspect, will be no less disputed – even litigated – as the reality of Terri’s death takes hold of both families.
“How can you mourn a wife whose death you wanted to hasten?” critics of Michael Schiavo will demand, as though he has never grieved the loss of the lively sweetheart with whom he was trying to conceive a child.
“How can you only just begin to mourn the daughter who left you years ago?” critics of the Schindler family will ask, befuddled, as though Terri’s physical presence – even in persistent, vegetative form – ceased being meaningful to anyone the day she collapsed.
Both sides, I’m afraid, will turn their mourning into a grim competition, the way they have every other aspect of this awful story.
It’s already begun, of course.
Michael Schiavo wants his wife, after her autopsy, to be cremated and her remains brought back to Pennsylvania for a service.
Her parents want her buried, intact, in a cemetery near their Florida home.
And supporters on both sides – politicians, lawyers, friends and kin – are in a race to see who can use the most hyperbole regarding the sorrow of Terri’s final passing.
Terri’s friends have said that all of this attention would have mortified the shy young woman with whom they once shared their own hopes and dreams. And she would have felt awful, they’ve said, that her predicament caused heartache and chaos in courtrooms and around dinner tables.
What I am hoping, then, is that both sides eventually agree upon a hopeful interpretation of another word related to the short life and long death of this doomed young woman:
Legacy.
Maybe, years from now, Terri’s husband and parents will choose to agree that Terri’s legacy to the world should have nothing to do with judges and lawyers, accusations and malfeasance, treachery and abandonment, sadness and pain.
Maybe, instead, they will say her legacy is that she reminded us not to take the important things for granted.
Like time with loved ones.
Making our deepest wishes known to those around us.
Forgiveness for imperfection.
Respect for differences.
Compromise.
Such a legacy would make everyone proud – the parents who raised her, the man who married her, the friends who cherished her.
And Terri herself.
Ronnie Polaneczky is a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News.
e-mail: polanerphillynews.com.
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