The Catholic Standard and Times

Terri Schiavo's family comes
home to grieve

By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent

The family of Terri Schindler-Schiavo came home to its former parish, Our Lady of Good Counsel in Southampton, Friday, April 15 to receive the prayers and comfort of local friends and relatives.

Hundreds of people gathered for a memorial Mass that was concelebrated by several priests, including Msgr. James D. Beisel, Vicar of Bucks County; Father Clemens J. Gerdelmann, parochial vicar of OLGC; Msgr. Thaddeus Malanowski, who tended to Terri’s spiritual needs for many years, and Father Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life and the Society for Apostolic Life.

In a moving homily, Father Gerdelmann said, “Matters of life and death are not a game. The decision to end a life should never be taken lightly … even if it’s within one’s power or jurisdiction to make such decisions. Let human beings not continue to be so bold and brazen as to think that we can ever better our own situation at the expense of another.”

Robert and Mary Schindler were accompanied by their son, Bobby; their daughter, Suzanne Schindler-Vitadama, and her husband, Michael, and daughter, Alexandra. The Schindlers’ cousin, Colleen Rumpf, played a violin solo of one of Terri’s favorite hymns, the “Prayer of St. Francis,” and two childhood friends gave a eulogy at the end of the Mass.

Earlier in the week, Robert and Mary Schindler spoke about the faith and love that held their family together as they watched their much-loved daughter, Terri, starve to death in a Florida hospice.

“I can’t even name all the people, all my friends, who were there every day for us,” Mary Schindler said. “I prayed to God every night that He would not let Terri suffer. Sometimes, I would pray that He would take her that night, just so she wouldn’t suffer, because I knew she was suffering.”

Although Terri’s husband, Michael, and his pro-euthanasia attorney, George Felos, persistently described Terri as peaceful during her 13-day ordeal without food or water, other witnesses describe her condition as “horrific.”

“She looked like the people who were released from the death camps in Nazi Germany,” her father said. “Her cheekbones were very pronounced, and her lips had shriveled so much that her teeth were bulging out, top and bottom, almost to the gum line. When you looked at her, all you could see were cheekbones and teeth. Her eyes were sunken deep into her skull, and her eyelids and under [her] eyes were reddish-blue. When she couldn’t breath through her nose anymore, she would gasp for air, and the inside of her mouth and throat was that dark maroon color … like raw meat. It was anything but dignified. It was sickening.”

How could parents endure such agony?

Faith, Schindler said: “We had faith in God, and believed that we would prevail because what they were doing was so evil. I didn’t think God would permit that to go on, and I was waiting for Him to get so mad He would bring the roof down. I really expected God to do something dramatic. And there were some dramatic things taking place on the federal level with Congress.”

A congressional request for a federal hearing of the case was a high moment for the Schindlers, but it quickly fizzled.

Robert Schindler said he knew something was amiss as soon as U.S. District Court Judge James Whittemore walked into his Tampa courtroom.

“He was very annoyed,” Schindler said. “And he had this arrogant attitude that this was his court and he wasn’t going to let anyone in the executive branch influence his court.

“He never allowed our attorneys to make their presentation,” Schindler said. “He kept interrupting them, hammering them with questions. But with Felos, he gave him the floor. It was a one-sided thing all over again.”

That description of the proceedings was also provided by Nora Wagner, a nurse who had been waiting outside Judge Whittemore’s courtroom, hoping to be allowed to testify on the Schindlers’ side.

Wagner was fired from Woodside Hospice the day President Bush signed the Incapacitated Persons Protection Act. She was working at the hospice on Sunday evening, when she came across a nurse who was drafting a letter protesting the government’s intervention.

“After she was done, nurses were signing it,” Wagner said. “I asked to see it, and I don’t know who it was addressed to, but basically it said how dare the federal government butt its nose in a state case, et cetera. This was a petition the nurses were signing. They all felt that Terri should die … that Terri wouldn’t want to live like this.

“I asked, ‘How do you know?’ She left nothing in writing. What I thought we had that night were healthy debates, but the next day my agency called to say, ‘Hospice doesn’t want you back.’”

Wagner, who was employed by an agency, was told they would find her other work, but said they would fire her if she went to the media about what happened in Woodside.

“I told them I would not be threatened — the last time I looked, this was still America — and [to] consider me fired,” Wagner said.

Mike Bell, a spokesperson at Hospice of Florida Suncoast, the parent company of Woodside Hospice, said he did not know who told Wagner’s agency not to send Wagner back to Woodside. He said he had heard about the incident only from the media.

Faith in God and the love of family and friends became the Schindlers’ only comfort as the days wore on, the court denials mounted and time began to run out.
“Personally, I almost went out of my mind,” Robert Schindler said. “But I stopped myself because this was out of my hands. There was nothing I could personally do to change what was happening. I just totally put myself in God’s hands. I told Him, ‘Okay, You’re in charge. I wish You’d tell me what You intend to do. But whatever it is, I’m along for the ride. I put 100 percent of my confidence in God, and whatever He decided, that the way it was going to be.”

The day Terri died was their darkest hour. Only minutes before her death, Bobby, Suzanne and Father Frank Pavone were told to leave.

“The police threw them out of the room so Schiavo could go in there and say he was cradling her when she died,” Schindler said.

Father Pavone spoke about his last moments in Terri’s room during an impromptu talk in Our Lady of Good Counsel auditorium after Friday night’s Mass.

“As we sat beside her, and laid hands on her, what was sitting beside her bed? A vase of flowers. It was filled with water. What an irony,” he said. “Those flowers were being cared for better than she was.”

The Schindlers are planning to continue to fight for the rights of people like their daughter.

“We’re committed to continue Terri’s fight,” Robert Schindler said. “But it will now be Terri’s fight to protect other people, and to make sure this never happens again.”

Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615