4:21pm July 17, 2014

I’m looking through reviews of “Tuesdays with Morrie”.

Which is honestly just as bad as reading the book would be (I know I would hate this book, I don’t need to read it to know that, it’s sappy inspirational glurge). But I’m looking for a particular quote from a review, that I wanted to use in a post. But by now there’s so many reviews that I have to slog through all of them. I’m only reading the negative reviews (because that’s what the one I am looking for was), and I actually agree with most of them.

But then I run into one that says that if Morrie (a professor dying of ALS) was as caring and selfless as he said he was, then he would give all his money to starving children around the world, rather than use it for caregivers. Basically, this reviewer is saying that it’s selfish for a disabled person to spend money on staying alive, because other people are worth more than the life of a disabled person, and disabled people are expensive to take care of, so we should all just die already.

I’ve been told this before myself, that I’m selfish for being alive, and even more selfish for having a living will stating to keep me alive at all costs. I remember during the Terri Schiavo case – and it doesn’t matter what side of it you were on, this was a hideous thing to say – people were saying things like “Only in America would we spend money keeping a vegetable alive when there are nondisabled people all around the world who are dying unnecessarily.”

I really didn’t need that slap in the face right now, that little reminder that my life isn’t supposed to be worth as much as the life of the nearest nondisabled person. That spending money on me is selfish but spending money on nondisabled people is good. That my existence is a product of capitalist greed gone wrong. That medical technology (like my feeding tube) keeps people alive today who shouldn’t be, and how this is a horrible drain on resources.

Can people stab the knife in and twist it any more or are they done yet?

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