Bit’sBit: The Dance

I’m sorry to say, I have some sad news for my readers, today.

My mother in law has passed on, on Friday night.

Even while she was dying, we were forced by events to watch the situation in Florida unfold, and one can hardly not comment on the parallels… and the differences.

I have some thoughts about the events there, and in Florida, in this week’s Bit’s Bit, called The Dance.

Long time readers to this site will have noticed that I’ve been somewhat more … how do I say this… In pain, I guess is the best way to say it.  This last week has been particularly painful for my family.  I’ve not said anything about it on BitsBlog, though I did make mention in the comments section of one post, but here it is;

Amongst all the legal fights of the Shaivo case …. and I think I’ve made my position relative to that case very clear… we have been dealing with another, more personal tragedy. My Mother-in-Law died on Friday evening at age 81… nearly 82; Her birthday would have been early next month.  Her problem was as I’ve said in these spaces, a lot like Terry Shaivo’s… a stroke.  Several, actually, over a period between the end of January, and Good Friday.

She was aware long enough to know that we’d managed to find a home for George, her dog. He managed to get placed just a few days ago, now. Penny Angels will be getting another check from us shortly. When told about it, Mom couldn’t speak, however.

Next day, things got worse… much worse. She suffered an even larger stroke. She was wheeled down to the MRI machine. That scan and the PET that followed, both showed no hope of recovery to any sort of consiousness even up to the point where Terry Shaivo had before she had HER feeding tube removed. 

At that point, the feeding tube was removed, per her written wishes, and we were forced to back and watch. And we waited, in the midst of the storm, for the inevitable 3am phone call.  And we watched the news, while we waited.  And we cried. And I started considering the situations here and in Florda, both indivdially and compartively.

Two similar stuations at the surface, Terry, and Donna’s Mom, but two very different situations under the surface. Mom was much worse off than Terry Shaivo, and, unlike the Florida case, Mom had signed a living will directing our actions… tying our hands, pretty much.  So, that made the questions one always asks themselves in these situations a little easier to deal with, but not much. Questions I have yet to answer. Oddly, they’re the same questions I asked when my Dad died about 5 years back, now, under similar conditions.  I didn’t manage to answer them then, either, I’m afraid.

Questions like, “What is the point that life begins and ends”?
“Did we do everything we could do?”
“What will we do without her?”
Along, of course, with a few hundred other questions, that I’ve not found words for yet.

At no time, however, did anyone ever ask, “When’s that bitch gonna die?”, as Michial Shaivo repeatedly did. That is, to say the very least, a jarring difference. The conclusions one is forced to draw from such a comment can only lead in one direction; The speaker is not acting out of love. But the legal system as we all know, tends often to get in the way of loving people and tends toward those acting on the letter of the law. The law suffers from having no understanding of love.

The difference, I think, is the ability to hear the music; they’re just going through the motions of life. That would seem a rather odd thing to say in such a comparison, I guess.  It’s really not, though the connection is going to take a few minutes to explain to you. I beg you, hear me out.

There’s an old story I was reminded of again today by a dear freind… A story I’m going to take in a slightly different direction.  It’s the story of a man and his wife. The husband is no dancer, and nearly prides himself on this point.  The wife in this couple really wants to go out dancing as she did in her youth, but the husband is ill equipped for the task, and so declines. They go back and forth for years on the issue until one day, when the husband sends away for a dance instruction manual. The manual comes, as it happens, with footprints you lay out on the floor so as to learn the steps.  He struggles with the process of getting the moves down pat, and then calls his wife, and shows her, step by step, the dance he’s learned. He runs through his routine, and proudly asks his wife “What do you think?”

His wife, incredulous, states her case: “It stinks”.
“What?” says the husband, “I executed the steps flawlessly!”
“Executed”, says his wife, “is the word. You KILLED it. You’re just going through the motions… You’ve negletcted the one thing that the dance weas about…. there’s no MUSIC!”

That’s what leaps out at me today, as I watch the situation of Terry Shaivo, and as I work to keep myself and my family afloat in the tidal wave of emotion surrounding the death of my mother-in-law, and as I deal with the inevitable comparison of those two events. (I suppose one in my situation would need to be dead not to watch the news and be forced to draw comparisons.)

A lot of us are so wrapped up in the legalise surrounding the Shaivo case, and in getting all the legal dance steps right, we’ve forgotten there’s soemthing much larger than the law… We’ve forgotten that the government is supposed to be the servant of the culture, not the reverse… that what the argument is all about…. is a life.

It is written that in hell there will be nothing but law and government. Certainly, these seem on the surface to have won the day in the Shaivo case. The ones banking so heavily on the law and calling for an end to Terry Shaivo’s life, I fear, cannot hear the music. They’ve got all the legal steps down right, they’ve got all the I’s dotted at the T’s crossed, but they don’t understand… don’t have the foggiest idea, why they’re dancing. And that to my mind is nearly as tragic as the death of Terry Shaivo itself.

It seems to me appropriate that Easter Sunday is when these thoughts all gel… since in reality what we’re celebrating today is the removal of the consequences of the law, by the one who came to fufill it. I will leave to the reader the task of sorting out the implications of that statement; there is far more behind it that it would appear.

Of my mother in law, I will so no more here than this;

When I first met her, the axoim about the mother being an example of the girl you’re interested in marrying in 20 or 30 years, was ringing in my ears. I took the axiom seriously, back then, and still do… because I found many of the same qualities that made my Donna so attractive to me, were there in her Mom.. which in turn made Donna yet more attractive to me.  Donna’s mother had a long and rich history… some of which I’m still learning about.

Thing is, though, I don’t need that exact history to know she was a special lady, and the world is a poorer place for her being gone from it. You see, a few months after I met them both, and I began to understand them both, I liked what I saw so much that I asked Donna to marry me and to my everlasting amaze and thanks, she said yes. That means I have the happy future of waking up next to the greatest living example of the wonderful woman that my mother in law was.

And I know, in my heart of hearts; Donna knows, as her Mom did, how to dance…

I can’t help but wonder if the long national debate over this case in Florida would be going on as long as it has, had the participants had the simple “beyond level” understanding of the matter that my mother in law did.

Rest in peace, Mom.
You are missed.

Thoughtful stuff from Thomas Sowell this morning.

Unfortunate, isn’t it, that thoughtful doesn’t matter in our judicial system, hmm?

The Canadian Press reports more on the level of lies coming form the Martin government.

When I spoke of the level of lies coming from Canada of late, the other day, this saga is a large part of what I was talking about.

I noted Stephen Harper lunching on Martin in the House yesterday over this, along with a number of other western Senators, but I doubt it’ll change much in that government.  Canada, it is clear, needs a change at the top, and soon… the sooner, the better to minimise the damage.

Darren says this morning:

I think it’s time to work on the billion dollar wrongful death lawsuit against Michael Schiavo.  With all the information coming out about the lack of help Terri got from her “husband”, I think a lawsuit would be successful…and warranted.

Agreed, Darren. Good idea, and overdue.
Just make sure we save something for Greer.

CNET News has info about a patch that Firefox users had better heed.

I posted something to Beck’s post of yesterday, already, I know. But personal events, caused me to revisit the issue.

I asked, yesterday, “How do they know?”

Look, even exclusive of right to die arguments, (Which I think you’ll recall, I’ve pointed up as being valid) how do the cops know they’re not dealing with outright murder? (Which, I think we’re dealing with in this case.)

And don’t tell me about her supposed husband having he final say in the matter without such a document; I think we both can come up with spousal abuse/spusal death cases which under that scenario, which wouldn’t be treated as murder. Lacy Peterson, anyone?

Billy’s complaint is, as usual, government intervention. His complaint is valid, but he’s missed the cause of the problem, I’m afraid.

Society, you see, and the government that serves it, make certain assumptions. In an ideal situation, the assumptions they make are alligned with the values of the people within that society. As such our laws, and our legal processes, our very way of thinking, assumes life is of the highest value. A look at the handsprings we must go through to enact a death penalty in response to a crime, and that such punishment is only used in cases where the criminal has taken someone else’s life, tells the whole story; Our society holds life dear. Oor legal system is designed to err, if it errs, on the side of life.

So it is that such absolutism as we see in Beck’s comments, regarding right to die cases in general, and in the Saivo case in particular, does not fit, does not serve justice.

For what it’s worth, Billy, I agree that such law as Reynolds and Hobbs suggest, are offensive. Yet, the problem becomes how to draw the line then between murder, and normal death, particularly if we’re using the Shaivo case as the standard? I don’t see much alternative to their proposal.

A couple admittedly less than spot-on examples…

If the husband, for example, had absolute say over the life of the wife; we’d then not have Scott Peterson in San Quenton, today. It would never go to trial, much less conviction.

If we make suicide and the aiding thereof, legal, how do we know it IS in fact a suicide, assuming the amount of evidence collected in he Shaivo case… IE; the one pulling the trigger saying “That’s what she wanted”.

So without a (signed) statement, stating the wishes of the parties in question under given conditions, how can the government know if our death really WAS our wish, or a crime perpitrated against us? Clearly, it can’t.

Here it is; The kind of conflict we’re discussing right now, is what happens when that underlying societal assumption is challanged; in this case, the assumption of life.

Government grows because we can no longer depend on that assumption of erring on the side of life. With the assumption of life, such documentation wouldn’t be needed. Without it, we’d be dealing with legal murder.

And yes, I think it has come to that.

Addendum:______________

It’s been noted that both the Republicans and Democrats have fallen out of their traditional roles over all of this; The Democrats have discovered States Rights, whereas the Republicans have discovered in a limited way, Federalism.

The reason behind this flip-flop is exactly what I’ve said here…. that the basic assumptions on which this case would usually rest, as in, the assumption of life, have been turned upside down? Why is it such a shock then, that the uses of government by the respective groups, have also reversed?

Hindrocket over at Power Line seems to be onto something with that supposed ‘talking points memo’ about the Shaivo case… the one the Republicans suposedly produced.

It was faked, and ABC is backing away from it.

Captain’s Quarters notes that “Media Matters” has swerbed into the truth, but still can’t see it.

This is why Congress wanted the federal court to take a de novo look at the Terri Schiavo case — so that Terri’s fate could be considered by a finder of fact besides George Greer for the first time. Media Matters for America blunders into the truth of why so many of us have so many problems with Greer’s handling of the case, although true to form, MMFA can’t recognize the truth with both hands and a flashlight.

The gang at GOP BLOGGERS predicted on Wed that oil prices would drop… based on the idea that the IMF is predicting that they’d rise.

Well, Guess what? AP reports today that

In afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.23, essentially flat, at 10,470.74.

The broader gauges were also narrowly higher. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was up 2.01, or 0.17 percent, at 1,173.72. The Nasdaq composite index added 4.61, or 0.23 percent, to 1,993.95, largely on strength in the chip industry; the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index was up 1.41 percent.

Oil dropped $2.53 to $53.50 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, as a weekly government report showed a larger than expected build in crude supplies. Gold prices also fell, and the U.S. dollar rose sharply against other major currencies following Tuesday’s decision by the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates by another quarter-point to 2.75 percent. Bonds were mixed, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury declining to 4.61 percent, from 4.63 percent late Tuesday.

Captain Ed…. you’d better figure out that the devotion to ‘balance’ is exactly what drove people away from the supposed mainstream press. Don’t become another MSM.

As a broadcaster, I’ve watched Err America with a jaundiced eye, even aside form the tripe they put in their programming. Little Green Footballs points at a movie on the subject.

Jon, over at GOP Bloggers raises an interesting point; The rush by the left toward strict Constitutional constructionism only in cases where they can kill some innocent.

From the folks at Power Line, comes the sad news that Bobby Short has passed on.

InstaGlenn says:

AIRBUS UPDATE: France has issued an emergency airworthiness directive on Airbus rudders.  But Billy Beck is still not satisfied that they’re serious.

Me, either. Read the directive.  It assumes that a visual inspection, is going to reveal failures that would require thousands of pounds of air pressure to happen.

Sorry. No sale. I choose life.