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Tears, sadness outside Schiavo’s hospice
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
PINELLAS PARK — Harvest Bashta sat on the grass, her 15-year old legs stretched out in front of her, an open Bible on her lap, tears streaming down her face as she tried to cope with the news — Terri Schiavo had died.
Just yards from the hospice where Schiavo took her last breath, Harvest wondered if it could be true. But as the tears kept falling she felt that her prayers for the 41-year old woman she never met had been futile.
“I was hoping for a miracle,” said the high school sophomore from Chicago. “This is a very sad day.”
A man played hymns on a trumpet. A woman wailed, “Jesus kill us.”
Children looked confused and saddened. Another woman blew a ram’s horn.After 15 years in what doctors said was a persistent vegetative state, the last five of which have wrapped up in bitter, public court struggle, Terri Schiavo has become a religious symbol for hundreds of people who gathered in front of the hospice where her feeding tube was removed on March 18.
When Franciscan Brother Paul O’Donnell announced her passing about an hour after she died at 9:05 a.m., the prayers became more fervent.
Rosary prayers, readings from the Bible, hymn-singing, and sobbing broke out among those who have spent nearly two weeks protesting and agonizing over the removal of the feeding tube.
A group sang How Great Thou Art, and 50 yards away people expressed their grief by kneeling round a makeshift altar, with pictures of the Virgin Mary, Jesus and Terri Schiavo behind the altar. Red roses and a statue of Jesus sat before the pictures, along with lit white candles and a bottle of PF 45 sunblock to protect them from the sun that had left most protesters beet red.
One boy about 5 years old reacted with a single word: “Cruel.”
“Life is precious. Euthanasia is murder,” said Dawn Kozsey, a resident in Ocala National Forest who spent the night outside the hospice.
Patrick Bautch, 39, of Milwaukee, said, “I’m deeply upset about it. I feel that our president has let us down. I believe he could have done something about it.”
Someone made a shrine by spreading a green blanket on the grassy swale outside the hospice. On the blanket was an oversize, wooden set of rosary beads surrounding a Bible. Yellow nylon rope help in place by PVC pipe bordered the shrine. There were fake flowers and a small American flag.
A few feet away, Monsignor Thaddeus Malanowski gave Holy Communion. “They may have won her body but we’ve won her soul. God’s won her soul,” said Malanowski, one of several advisers to Schiavo’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler.
Mary Ann McGuire, 51, of Scranton, Pa., who had been outside the hospice for several days over the past week, stood weeping by the side of the road outside the hospice. She compared Schiavo’s death to Jesus’.
“God allowed people to do this to his son,” she said. “The legal system executed her and she was innocent, just like Jesus was. I was thankful for Terri to be at peace now. She’s in heaven with a new body that suffers no pain.”
But she looked around at the crowd of protesters that had thinned considerably since last week and wished more had stayed.
“If everyone who loved Jesus was here, they couldn’t have done this.”
Patrick Bautch of Milwaukee said he was angry with President Bush for not intervening. He dropped his sign which read, “President Bush Please Help Terri.”
“Where is he?” Bautch asked. “He could have done something.”
From time to time during the 13 days Schiavo was without food and water, a handful of supporters of her husband would join the protesters.
They argued that Michael Schiavo knew what was best for his wife and loved her enough to see to it that her wish not to live in a vegetative state would be granted.
Rick Carner of Texas, who spent the last week outside the hospice, said, “I can’t believe this is the way we treat a human life. We will not forget her.”
As for Michael, Carner said, “As a Christian I should forgive. But it’s hard right now. I think he has a hard heart and he will answer to God.”
When the word of Terri Schiavo’s death went out Thursday, none of Michael Schiavo’s supporters were outside the hospice.
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