TODAY marks the tenth anniversary of the court-ordered starvation and dehydration of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who suffered massive brain damage after she collapsed in cardiac arrest at the age of 26. At Christ or Chaos, Thomas Droleskey discusses the famous case and presents a first-hand account of Schiavo’s last days by the priest who was by her side when she died. There were police in the room also. They were there to prevent anyone, even the parents who loved her and brought her into the world, from giving Schiavo food or water. The Rev. Frank Pavone wrote:

There was a little night table in the room.  I could put my hand on the table and on Terri’s head all within arm’s reach.  And on that table was a vase of flowers filled with water.  And I looked at the flowers.  They were beautiful.  There were roses and other types of flowers and there was another vase at the foot of the bed.  I saw two beautiful bouquets of flowers filled with water — fully nourished, living, beautiful.  And I said to myself, this is absurd, totally absurd.  These flowers are being treated better than this woman.  She has not had a drop of water for almost two weeks.  Why are those flowers there?  What type of hypocrisy is this?  The flowers were watered.  Terri wasn’t.  And had I dipped my hand in that water and put it on her tongue, the [police] officer would have led me out, probably under arrest.  Something is wrong here.

As the media reported, those who killed Terri were quite angry that I said so. The night before she died, I said to the media that her estranged husband Michael, his attorney Mr. Felos, and Judge Greer were murderers. I also pointed out, that night and the next morning, that contrary to Felos’ description, Terri’s death was not at all peaceful and beautiful. It was, on the contrary, quite horrifying. In all my years as a priest, I never saw anything like it before.

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Alan M. writes:

I remember this day very well as it was one of those moments in history that gets seared in your memory, much like people remember where they were when they heard Kennedy was shot.

I was on the West Coast with an early commute to work and it was a beautiful, San Diego spring morning. I had just returned from getting a coffee and had been listening to Laura Ingraham on talk radio. She had been following the Terri Schiavo case closely and was basically on a death watch calling what was being done to Terri by its true name – murder.

Anyone who has been with a loved one as they die knows the feeling that your universe becomes very small towards the end. It is as if it matches the soul dropping every earthly attachment, preparing to go through the small portal that separates us from our Maker. I can’t imagine what her parents were going through there, being a part of it and not being able to save their daughter.

It was about 6:55 a.m. Pacific Time that Ingraham broke from the the train of righteous anger to announce that Terri Schiavo had just died. Ingraham had to excuse herself by going to commercials so she could collect herself. Until the top of the hour, typical talk radio commercials served as the backdrop to the silence and prayers offered for Terri by many across the country.

Our society truly changed at that moment. We haven’t been able to get it back. The bright, sunny San Diego morning no longer seemed as sunny given that evil had won this battle.

Laura writes:

Since Schiavo’s death, the movement for physician assisted suicide and euthanasia, as it is euphemistically called, has grown dramatically. Here are some relevant articles by the Center for Bioethics and Culture, which campaigns against the legal killing of the sick.

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