Terri Schiavo's Final Hours: An Eyewitness Account

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life
President, National Pro-life Religious Council

I spent the night of March 30, 2005 in a Florida hospice. I was at the bedside of Terri Schiavo during the last 14 hours of her earthly life, right up until five minutes before her death. During that time with Terri, joined by her brother and sister, I expressed your care, concern, and prayers. I told Terri over and over that she had many friends around the country, many people who were praying for her and were on her side. I had also told her the same things during my visits to her in the months before her feeding tube was removed, and am convinced she understood.

I've known Terri's family since 1999. They put my name on the short, court-approved list of people who could visit Terri’s room, which had police officers stationed outside of it.  If I were not on that visitor's list I could not get in that room beyond the armed guard. Why not? The euthanasia advocates had to be able to say that Terri was an unresponsive person in some kind of vegetative state, coma or whatever terminology they want to use to suggest that she was completely unresponsive.  The only way to prove she was responsive was to see her for yourself.  

I went to see her in September 2004 and again in February 2005. When her mom first introduced her to me, she stared at me intently.  She focused her eyes.  She would focus her eyes on whoever was talking to her.  If somebody spoke to her from the other part of the room she would turn her head and her eyes towards the person who was talking to her. 

Some of the doctors dared to say, "Oh, it's just unconscious reflex reactions."  Interestingly, that's exactly the same thing abortion supporters say about the unborn child in the video The Silent Scream when the child opens his mouth and tries to move away from the instrument that is about to destroy him.  They say, "Oh, that's just an automatic reflex."  That's the phrase they always use to dehumanize a person. 

I told Terri she had many people around the country and around the world who loved her and were praying for her.  She looked at me attentively.  I said, "Terri now we are going to pray together, I want to give you a blessing, let's say some prayers."  So I laid my hand on her head.  She closed her eyes. I said the prayer.  She opened her eyes again at the end of the prayer.  Her dad, who has a mustache, leaned over to kiss her and said, "OK Terri now here comes the tickle." She smiled and laughed and after he kissed her I saw her return the kiss.  Her mom asked her a question at a certain point and I heard her voice.  She was trying to respond.  She was making sounds in response to her mother's question, not just at odd times and meaningless moments.  I heard her trying to say something but she was not, because of her disability, able to articulate the words.  She was certainly responsive. 

The night before she died, I was in her room for probably a total of 3-4 hours, and then for another hour the next morning -- her final hour. To describe the way she looked as “peaceful” is a total distortion of what I saw.  She was a person who for thirteen days had no food or water.  She was, as you would expect, very drawn in her appearance as opposed to when I had seen her before.  Her eyes were open but they were moving from one side to the next, constantly darting back and forth.  I watched her for hours, and the best way I can describe the look on her face is “terrified sadness.” 

Her mouth was open the whole time.  It looked like it was frozen open. She was panting rapidly.  It wasn't peaceful in any sense of the word.  She was panting as if she had just run a hundred miles.  It was a shallow panting. Her brother Bobby was sitting on one side of the bed I was on the other facing him.  Terri's head in between us and her sister Suzanne was on my left.  We sat there and we had a very intense time of prayer. And we were talking to Terri, urging her to entrust herself completely to the Savior.  I assured her repeatedly of the love and prayers and concern of so many people.  

We held her hand and stroked her head. During those hours, one of the things I did was to chant, in Latin, some of the most ancient hymns of the Church. One of the chants I used was the "Victimae Paschali Laudis," which is the ancient proclamation of the resurrection of Christ. There, as I saw before my eyes the deadly work of the Culture of Death, I proclaimed the victory of life. "Life and death were locked in a wondrous struggle," the hymn declares. "Life's Captain died, but now lives and reigns forevermore!"

And then we had just times of silence … just sitting there in silence trying to absorb what was happening. 

Who else was in the room with me, Bobby, Suzanne and Terri? Police officers -- the whole time. There was always at least one, sometimes two, three, or more -- armed police officers in the room.  Why were they in the room?  They wanted to make sure that we didn't do anything that we weren't supposed to do, like give her communion or maybe a glass of water.  In fact, Bobby, sitting on the other side of the bed, would occasionally stand up to lean over his sister.  When he stood up and did that, the officer would move around towards the foot of the bed so that he could have a direct line of sight on what we were doing.  The morning that she died we went in there fairly early and I had to go back outside in front of the hospice to do an interview. In order to go out on time I had a little timepiece in my hand. At the beginning of our visit I put it in my left hand, leaned over Terri and extended my right to bless her and we began praying.  I closed my eyes and I felt a tap on my left hand.  It was the police officer who said, "Father, what do you have in your hand?"  I said, "Oh, officer, it's a little time piece."  "I'll have to hold it while you're here," he said. We couldn't have anything in our hands.  He didn't even know what it was.  Maybe I was going to try to give her communion.  Maybe I was going to try to moisten her lips.  Who knows what terrible thing I was about to do? 

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 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.  

After I said these things, Mr. Felos and others in sympathy with him began attacking me in the press and before the cameras. Some news outlets began making a story out of their attacks and said I was "fanning the flames" of enmity and hatred.

Actually, there's a simple reason why they are so angry with me. They had hoped that they could present Terri's death as a merciful and gentle act. My words took the veil of euphemism away, calling this a killing, and giving eyewitness testimony to the fact that it was anything but gentle. Mr. Felos is a euthanasia advocate, and like all such advocates, he needs to manipulate the language, to sell death in an attractive package. Here he and his friends had a great opportunity to do so. But a priest, seeing their work close-up and then telling the world about it, just didn't fit into their plans.

One of the attacks they made was that a "spiritual person" like a priest should be speaking words of compassion and understanding, instead of venom. But compassion demands truth. A priest is also a prophet, and if he cannot cry out against evil, then he cannot bring about reconciliation. If there is going to be any healing between these families or in this nation, it must start with repentance on the part of those who murdered Terri and now try to cover it up with flowery language.

Another aspect of the Terri Schiavo tragedy is that many people misunderstand its cause and therefore its solution. They think the problem was that Terri did not leave any written instructions about whether she wanted to be kept alive. In order to avoid any such problem in their own lives, they are now told that they have to draw up a "living will." This is both erroneous and dangerous.

Terri's case is not about the withdrawal of life-saving medical treatment, but rather about the killing of a healthy person whose life some regarded as worthless. Terri was not dying, was not on life support, and did not have any terminal illness. Because some thought she would not want to live with her disability, they insisted on introducing the cause of death, namely, dehydration.

So what good is a living will supposed to accomplish, aside from saying, "Please don't argue about killing me, just kill me?"

The danger in our culture is not that we will be over-treated, but rather that we will be under-treated. We already have the right to refuse medical treatment. What we run the risk of losing is the right to receive the most basic humane care — like food and water — in the event we have a disability.

Our culture also promotes the idea that as long as we say we want to die, we have the right to do so. But we have a basic obligation to preserve our own life. A person who leaves clear instructions that they don’t want to be fed is breaking the moral law by requesting suicide. 

If you want to make plans for your future health care, do not do so by trying to predict the future. The reason you cannot indicate today what medical treatments you do or don't want tomorrow is that you can’t predict the future. You don't know what medical condition you will have tomorrow, nor what treatments will be available to give you the help you need. Living wills try to predict the future, and people can argue over the interpretation of a piece of paper just as much as they argue about what they claim someone said in private.

The better solution is to appoint a health care proxy, who is authorized to speak for you if you are in a condition in which you cannot speak for yourself. This should be a person who knows your beliefs and values, and with whom you discuss these matters in detail. In case you cannot speak for yourself, your proxy can ask all the necessary questions of your doctors and clergy, and make an assessment when all the details of your condition and medical needs are actually known. That's much safer than predicting the future. Appointing a health care proxy in a way that safeguards your right to life is easy. The National Right to Life Committee has designed a "Will to Live," a document by which you can appoint a proxy and indicate your desire for morally appropriate care. You can obtain such a document from Priests for Life. (See more information at www.priestsforlife.org/willtolive). 

I am in regular contact with Terri's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, and her siblings, Bobby and Suzanne. They are strong Christians with a beautiful, gentle spirit. If you wish to relay a personal message to them, you can send it to terri@priestsforlife.org and I will pass it along to them myself. Terri’s family, rather than be consumed by grief and anger, have reached out to other families who face similar tragedies. They are building a network of people who want to help. Together with Priests for Life, they have also launched the annual observance of “Terri’s Day” every March 31. Find out more about how you can be involved at www.TerrisDay.org.

Let us continue to commend Terri to the Lord, mindful of the equal value of every life, no matter how prominent or obscure, healthy or sick. 

You can get more information on the Terri Schiavo tragedy on our website, www.priestsforlife.org/terri, and you can order a CD of Fr. Frank's talk on this topic at our online store.