With "Home Burial," Robert Frost wrote about a husband and wife mourning the loss of a child. Each dealt with their grief separately; the wife relived her loss and the husband tried to put it behind him. In the end they could not function together, for they could not recognize the other's grief as real and grew bitter. Frost used the wife to speak to human grief: "Friends make pretense of following to the grave / But before one is in it, their minds are turned / And making the best of their way back to life and living people / And things they understand."

I couldn't help but recollect this poem as I read about Terri Schiavo, the woman in Florida whose husband had tried to remove her nourishing tube. Schiavo's husband, Michael, had the tube removed by court order, as he is her official guardian and claimed it was apropos to her wishes. However, he was stopped by the Florida Legislature and governor, stepping on the heels of Florida's judicial branch. This intervention has garnered much debate from the political world. Many claim it is unconstitutional, including Michael Schiavo, who is contesting it in court as such. The legislative branch clearly assessed the individual case of Terri Schiavo in their deus ex machina of a law, and laws are supposed to be general. Furthermore, they went over the courts to do it. What struck me about the issue, however, was not the political overtones but the way Shiavo's parents dealt with their daughter's condition.

Bob Schindler, Terri's father, was happy his daughter had been put back on what was essentially life support, according to a report on CNN.com. "Terri is great, absolutely great," he said. "She has her color back. She's tired, but she just looks wonderful." The doctors surrounding the Schiavo case have maintained that Terri has no cognition, but her parents have made tapes of her appearing to respond to her mother's voice and following a balloon with her eyes. Apparently this is not abnormal behavior for a brain dead patient. Terri lost brain functionality in 1990, and has been able to breathe but not eat on her own since then. Her parents do not accept this. They still see her as functioning and ultimately curable. Michael Schiavo contests that every possible cure has failed and says it is time Terri, and everybody else involved, was at peace.

When is it honorable to stop grieving? Frost raised that question, and my belief is that Michael Schiavo is coping with it now, as the judicial decision which will most likely end his wife's life approaches. This is not a right to die case as pertains to, say, Doctor Kevorkian. Kevorkian actively euthanized people who wanted control over their own deaths. This case is over a patient's right to refuse care, boiling down to an assessment of whether Michael Schiavo can truly attest that this is what his wife would have wanted. And there is no right answer, there is no bad guy. Legally, it is a gray area, because Terri did not leave a living will, and so no one can claim absolutely to know what she would have wanted. Both sides of the argument have claimed that what she wanted is what they want; the parents want their daughter kept alive and the husband wants his wife allowed to die. So far, this argument has not had any explicit religious overtones, at least in the papers. But, if you're a skeptic like me, you may think the legislature is using this issue to appeal to conservative voters in Florida, and these voters are religiously conservative. I don't think this is a religious issue. This is not suicide, like one could argue euthanasia is. It is merely death. And death is inevitable, in both the secular and religious worlds.

Both sides have created bad guys. Schiavo tried to deny his in-laws access to their daughter, until ultimately and thankfully changing his mind. Schiavo and his in-laws may or may never have been close-I don't know. But clearly they, like the rest of us, are hung up on the basic question of when it is okay to stop grieving. We see in this a little of what the country went through after 9/11. People faced great tragedy, but could not spend the rest of their lives reliving that tragedy. There is no use surviving if you don't really survive. Like the parents in "Home Burial," those close to Terri Schiavo have created bad guys so that they may feel better about the uncertain decisions they make.

Scientifically, Terri Schiavo's brain is dead. I don't always buy scientific facts as absolute, however, as there is always the very small chance that she could somehow be saved even after so many years. But is death such a horrible thing? To her parents it is. But to Michael, it is peace for Terri. The legislature is using the issue to buy support among the conservative voting block of Florida; Jeb Bush is doing the same thing. But this is not a political issue. It is not a moral issue. This is a human issue. And maybe, as sad as it seems, Robert Frost is right. We cannot go to the grave with those around us who die, we have to move on. It isn't about being honorable; it's about facing our own inadequacies and coping with them. Ultimately it is tragic for everyone involved. But facing mortality is not new to the human race.

Hopefully this issue won't become a political hotcake. For the Schiavos, I think it's time to move on.