"Ethics" by Linda Pastan (a poem)

This is a poem I read for AP LIterature, it's called "Ethics" by Linda Pastan. It rang a bit of a chord in me. So what would you choose: the Rembrandt painting or the old woman who doesn't have many yeras left to live anyways?

"Ethics"
In ethics class so many years ago
our teacher asked this question every fall:
If there were a fire in a museum,
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn't many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we'd opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother's face
leaving her usual kitchen to wander
some drafty, half imagined museum.
One year, feeling clever, I replied
why not let the woman decide herself?
Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.
This fall in a real museum I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so, myself. The colors
within this frame are darker than autumn,
darker even than winter-the browns of earth,
though earth's most radiant elements burn
through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one
and all beyond saving by children.

I was ashamed to say, I thought of choosing the painting first but then I thought, what if that woman was my grandmother? But I realized that would be saying the same things as the painting or a little girl. Life is still life, you can't categorize it by the years, it is not yours to keep or define. I choose life.