I don’t think it matters what your position on Terri Schiavo was — whether you thought she should have been kept “alive” or not; whether, like me, you thought that regardless of how that question was answered, the rule of law question was more significant, or not — today is a day for grieving.

Terri is dead.

The fighting over Terri will go on, of course. Just as people will tell you that G-d’s Will is done and their prayers are answered regardless of any specific outcome, so, too, Terri’s death will not stop those people whose real fight isn’t for truth anyway.

The latest news, of course, is that Michael Schiavo must be a monster, because he wouldn’t even let the parents, siblings and priest be in the room in Terri’s final moments.

“And so his heartless cruelty continues until this very last moment,” said the Rev. Frank Pavone, a Roman Catholic priest. — “Feud Continues After Terri’s Death” (March 31, 2005) CBS News.

As one of my law professors said tonight after mentioning what the priest had said, “Would you let them in?” In the final moments of your wife’s life, if you actually loved her and wanted peace instead of acrimony surrounding her as she passed, would you let in people who insisted you were a murder and a heartless, cruel monster? People who were on record as saying that even if they believed that your wife’s fervent wish was not to be kept alive this way, they would ignore those wishes and do it anyway?

I cannot blame Michael. I would have done exactly the same thing in those circumstances.

At any rate, regardless of whatever else may be true, Terri is no longer subject to suffering (if she ever, in fact, was). My belief in the importance of the “rule of law aspects” of this case and in the rightness, from that perspective (and that perspective only), of the legal case do not prevent grieving.

Another human being has died. It is a sad day.

And while nothing of the sort will come to her family anytime soon, the one ameliorating element of her death is that, finally, she rests in peace.

Goodbye, Terri. Sleep well.