I knew that the circus wouldn't end with Schiavo's death, and sure enough, yesterday I watched the pathetic spectacle of a concrete, conclusive, scientific autopsy disputed by people who claim to just "know" that Schiavo was conscious and aware. They "felt" a presence.

I watched my mother die, from the diagnosis of Alzheimer's across ten years to the exact moment of her passing. I could watch her consciousness erode, while her lower brain retained the ability to move her body in familiar ways. Her mind taught her body to smile, and after her mind was gone, her body could still smile. But having witnessed her mind depart, I couldn't mistake her smile for anything other than muscles being cycled through familiar configurations by neurons with nothing better to do. I allowed myself to take some comfort in her smile, as a sort of "memento" of my mother, but I knew better than to mistake that smile for my mother herself.

In the second before she died, my mother's eyes were visibly moving beneath the lids. That's what eyeballs do, even if there's no mind behind the eyes to see. A few hours earlier, when the lids would open at random, her eyes appeared to automatically track movement and light. That's what the low-level vision centers of the brain do. But there was no mind directing those movements. There would be no response to "look over there".

I understand the temptation to interpret the residual firing of neurons as evidence that a loved one is still in there. It's easy to succumb, because our brains are wired with a prejudice for finding patterns in everything--faces in clouds, faces on Mars, whatever. When those patterns are reminiscent of a loved one, we're strongly tempted to see that loved one and match the pattern with memories of the loved one alive and well. There's crosstalk between perception and memory.

I had the "advantage" of seeing my mother's death in the form of a continuum of degeneration across years, so I could connect the dots. It undoubtedly was much harder for Schiavo's family and friends to connect those dots across the sudden onset of coma, and so, in the absence of direct experience and evidence, they had to choose which authority to believe. Pastor versus doctor...and the pastor held out hope and told them what they wanted to hear. The doctors just delivered bad news.

Understanding it doesn't excuse it. Those people inflicted an unimaginable amount of pain and suffering on themselves and on others...for no good reason at all. Therein is the tragedy....the whole Schiavo "thing" should never have happened. It was all so unnecessary.

Science may not always bring good news, but it can bring closure. I'd rather have an answer than faith.

I didn't comment during the height of the Schiavo affair, and now you know why: It has a personal angle that's painful to relate. Writing about it now brings back a lot of memories, and frankly, I'd just as soon not discuss it further.