| No
real news about the film. Entered a few more festivals. Waiting to hear
back from a bunch. Still hoping to get into a couple of good ones.
Haven't really heard
back from anyone I sent the film to. Not sure what that means. A couple
of people wrote to say thank you, but all said they were too busy to watch
the film any time soon. Hopefully people are enjoying it.
Terry Schiavo passed
away yesterday. I was very saddened by the way her final days played out.
The thing that struck me most was the fact that even if her family and
her husband, (who seems to have been a husband on name only), had agreed
that removing her feeding tube was the best thing to do for her, and that
it was what she would have wanted, it didn't seem all that compassionate.
Starving someone to death doesn't strike me as the most compassionate
way to end a life, even if they are in a vegetative state.
The thing that seems
to have been lost in all the talk of legalities is the very root question
that we should have been addressing as a nation:
"What is the
most compassionate way to respond to a loved one who is in a vegetative
state, or a coma, or who is brain dead, or who is suffering from a painful
terminal illness?"
Our response will
always depend upon the circumstances, and we will always need to take
into account the wishes of the individual, if they are known, but we should
always be seeking the most compassionate response.
And starving someone
to death, even if every doctor around assures me that the patient can't
feel any pain from their organs failing, doesn't strike me as compassionate.
What is the alternative?
I wish I knew. An assisted death in very clear cases might be compassionate,
and prolonged assisted living in unclear cases would also be compassionate.
The problem with the Terry Schiavo case, for me, is that it was not at
all clear.
As a Buddhist this
reminds me of the teachings on death and impermanence.
As Nick says in Dark
September Rain:
NICK: The world
is impermanent. It is not solid, fixed or stable. There is no true safety
in this world. After what's happened to Gabe, this is more apparent
to me than ever. My teacher says that we want to believe that happiness
and security come from the world, from our friends and family and our
homes and jobs and the food we eat and the TV we watch. But there is
no security in those things. They can bring us pain and suffering at
any moment, because at any moment they can be ripped from us. The only
true happiness comes from seeing the world as it truly exists. Happiness
is in our mind, not the world outside. But the problem is, to really
have that happiness, to have that peace of mind, you need to see the
world as it really exists. But I'm not at that point.
Death should also remind us to live. Harriet says in Dark September
Rain:
HARRIET: The morning
I passed away, I was thinking of planting hydrangeas. I thought they'd
look. I certainly wasn't thinking about dying. Ben and I had talked
about it on occasion, but it wasn't something we wanted to dwell on.
While that made it easier to ignore the reality of what was coming,
it didn't help to give it meaning. Our lives are precious and they only
gain more value as we acknowledge that they will end. If we pretend
that things will go on like they have, that we will go on like we have,
then it is easy to let slip the moments and the people that we should
treasure. It is all too simple to pretend that the ones we love will
always be with us, or we with them. Every living thing dies. And there
is no knowing when that death will come. It may come in a tragedy large
or small, it may come as an accident, or it may come while you are sitting
in your favorite chair thinking about flowers. But it comes to everyone.
Denying this, we can pretend that there is time for real living at some
later date and cut ourselves off from our hearts and our loved ones
in an attempt to fulfill some fleeting desires that in the moment of
our death will be forgotten. I had no regrets that I had not spent enough
time with Ben or with the children before they died, or that I had left
things undone, or places unseen when I passed. And that made it easy
to go.
That's the best that I can put it.
Back
to Top
|
