March 17, 2005

Dear Mr. Webster,

I have long admired you from afar. Your wordlist makes my heart go pitter-pat. I dream of our volumes nestled side by side in the darkened library.

With Affection and Anticipation,
BioTech

 

Dear BioTech,

Although I am indeed deeply flattered, I am afraid it cannot be. In truth, my dear, I am old enough to be your grandfather. It must be said, many of my entries are obsolete, and I would only be holding back a modern young tome such as yourself. Surely you would have your choice of engineering volumes, programming manuals, or physics texts closer to your own age. I understand some of those cutting-edge quantum sciences are quite exciting.

With fond regrets,
Webster 1913

My heart is crushed like the petals of Callirhoe involucrata in a pestle for protein electrophoresis.

I care not for dreary college textbooks and dry programming manuals! My bits and bytes burn for only one ... and that is Webster 1913

Oh, Webster 1913, why won't you be my grease cock, my futtock, my horehound? I will gladly be your Ralph ...

Since I'm little and green, I don't have many friends. Most people want to associate with other people just like them. I don't know why that is. Does it make them feel safer?

It's funny how sometimes things conspire to keep you hidden when in reality, all the time, there you are, sitting in plain sight. I guess that maybe it's just one those little things like being on the outside, looking in but nobody else can see you. They're too trapped in their own little word to care.

The mannequin has no past and it stares blankly
at the pedestrians and the passersby as they make their assigned rounds
off to God knows where and to do God knows what.
As they pass, they take on a blur that only comes
with a sense of familiarity of a never changing world.
The mannequin is oblivious to the sounds of the streets and the honking of horns
It dreams with its eyes wide open and is never interrupted
by something as simple and so sweet like the glare of the sun
or the blink of an eye.

The mannequin has no present and has no stories to tell
and even if it did, it would have nobody to listen
It has nothing to look forward to or to remember
The window that it stands in that acts like its own little perch on the world
is really its own little prison and it sees all or sees nothing at the same time
The mannequin cannot feel something as beautiful as a raindrop falling from sky
Because to it, the sky doesn't exist and the pose that is struck
is the one that will be struck forever
And the screams that it emits are cast upon smiling faces and deafened ears

The mannequin has no future unless you consider fashion
but even then you're talking about something that is fleeting at best
The mirror that it stares into hour after hour and day after day and year after year
Doesn't even have the common decency to return an image
The mannequin only feels numbness and the hands that caress it are foreign
and the clothes that it wears are nothing more than a temporary disguise
that serve to shield it from a world it begs to be a part of..

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Schindler

I can understand your reluctance to let go of your daughter, Terri Schiavo. Children are the most precious thing we have, and it is the job of a child to bury a parent, and never the alternative. But it's time to face reality. Your daughter is dead. She died over a decade ago when a massive heart attack cut off the supply of blood and oxygen to her brain. Maybe she scowls once in while and maybe she winces when someone changes her I.V., but that isn't life. At least that's not human life. Humans do things. Humans know that life is a verb.

Is this really the way you want to remember her, being turned every few hours to prevent bedsores? Being fed through a tube because she can't swallow? Or slowly curling up as her tendons and muscles contract from disuse?

It's like this, she's not going to get better. She's not going to get out of that bed, not going to speak, say hello or ever even know you're there. The woman you remember, the little girl is gone. Terri is dead. The fact that her heart still pumps in irrelevant. Our brains are what makes us who we are and hers has been destroyed. Your son-in-law isn't trying to take her from you; fate and circumstance did that years ago. Accept this.

What I have a harder time accepting is what you are doing to Michael. You may have lost your daughter, but he lost his wife. He didn't do this to her, or choose her fate. He was looking forward to decades together and then, BANG, she's gone. You act like he's trying to do something cruel. Fate already did something cruel. Of the three of you, he's the only one who has faced it.

In fact, your obsession has turned cruel. The real effect of your is not to save your daughter, but to keep Michael from moving on. He has been a loyal, patient husband and clung to hope for years after it disappeared. The fact that he's seeing someone now doesn't make him disloyal. Should he emulate you and carry a torch for eternity?

It's time to let this go, to give up your obsession. I'm sorry for you, but your misguided crusade is wrong. You've turned your daughter into a partisan political pawn. You're not only hurting Michael, you're hurting yourselves. Ask yourself, are these endless battles really making you happy? Wouldn't closure be a comfort?

For your own sake, please end your denial. Let Terri go. After all, she left long ago.