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Terri Schiavo's final moments
01/04/2005 09:30 - (SA)
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| Terri Schiavo's father Bob Schindler cries during a memorial service for Terri. (Andrew Kaufmann, AP) |
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Florida - In the end, Terri Schiavo was with her husband, his lawyers and her beloved stuffed animals - but not her own flesh and blood.
Schiavo's parents and siblings had fought bitterly for years against her husband's efforts to have her feeding tube removed and to end her life. A final flare-up in that acrimonious struggle prompted Michael Schiavo to eject his wife's brother and sister from her hospice room just minutes before she breathed her last breath.
Early on Wednesday, with her breathing becoming rapid to laboured, and her limbs mottled with red splotches, it became clear that she was entering the last stages of her life. Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, arrived at the hospice around 10:30 that day and, uncharacteristically, didn't leave.
At some point on Wednesday evening, Mrs Schiavo's breathing became very laboured and "we thought the end might be near," said Felos, himself a hospice volunteer. A hospice worker repositioned Schiavo, and that eased her breathing, Felos said.
Dying with dignity
Michael Schiavo spent the night in a small room down the hall from his wife's, as he had every night for the past two weeks. When his wife's family wanted to visit her, he would leave the room.
This detente worked reasonably well until 08:45 on Thursday, when hospice officials asked Bobby Schindler and his sister, Suzanne Vitadamo, to leave the room while they did an assessment. At that point, a clearly distraught Schindler got into an argument with one of the officers guarding the room, Felos said.
"We want to be in the room when she dies," the Reverend Frank Pavone, a family supporter, quoted Bobby Schindler as saying.
Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, said the husband's "overriding concern here was to provide for Terri a peaceful death with dignity."
Around this same time, hospice workers went to Michael Schiavo and told him if he wanted to see his wife before she died, "You'd better come right now."
Michael Schiavo cradled his wife as she clutched a stuffed tabby cat under one of her horribly contracted arms. Looking on were Felos, another attorney, Michael Schiavo's brother, Brian, and several of the hospice workers who had cared for her during her five-year stay there.
A bouquet of white lilies and roses perfumed the room.
Around 09:00, Terri Schiavo was dead. Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, were not on the hospice grounds.
After some time, Michael Schiavo left and allowed the Schindler family to visit with her body. He told them they could take any item from the room that they wanted.
When the Schindlers left, hospice workers bathed Terri Schiavo's body. Michael went to see her one last time before turning her over to the medical examiner for an autopsy.
As she lay on a medical examiner's gurney, about 40 hospice workers formed a circle around her and held their own remembrance.
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