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Terri Schiavo's parents, their advocates watch her drift closer to death

BY ANDREW METZ AND CRAIG GORDON | STAFF CORRESPONDENTS; Andrew Metz reported from Florida and Craig Gordon reported from Washington.

March 29, 2005

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - There are about 34 paces between unremitting hope and reality.

At one end is a thrift store that is the headquarters for the campaign to save Terri Schiavo, on the other is the driveway to the hospice where she is dying.

In the embers of legal and political failures to restore Schiavo's feeding - the 11th day since she was cut off from fluids and nutrition - it is growing harder for her relatives to make the short journey.

"I was scared to death to go to see her for fear of what I'd see," her father, Bob Schindler, said yesterday upon leaving the hospice and emerging to reporters eager to transmit the latest shred of news about the condition of the brain-damaged woman whose plight has stirred the nation. "She is failing but she is still with us."

The Schindlers had emissaries in Washington yesterday, who made their case in front of the White House and then on Capitol Hill. They continued to profess hope they could miraculously overturn a long judicial history that has sided with her husband, Michael, and ruled that she is in a persistent vegetative state and did not want to be artificially sustained.

But more and more, they are walking with the heaviness from a fight that is ebbing. Schiavo's mother, Mary Schindler, has not been able to bear entering the hospice room in recent days. And Bob Schindler yesterday described his daughter as emaciated, but responsive.

Yesterday, scores of people fervently prayed outside the hospice and in singing processionals in front of the driveway.

Paul O'Donnell, one of the family's spiritual advisers, said that Sunday night Schiavo moved her arms and made sounds when an old friend visiting her reminisced about dancing and nights out.

"Everyone is writing the obituary," said O'Donnell, a Franciscan monk, "but the only person that isn't writing her own obituary is Terri Schiavo."

Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, yesterday dismissed the family's claims as wishful thinking.

"People see what they want to see," he told reporters outside his office. He said that he spent more than an hour in Schiavo's room yesterday and that she was peaceful, with soft contemporary music playing and a teddy bear at her side. He said her breathing was more rapid, but he saw no signs of discomfort.

Michael Schiavo has been out of public view since the tube was removed March 18, but Felos said the husband has been at his wife's side consistently and still intends to have her cremated and her ashes buried in his family plot outside of Philadelphia, despite the Schindlers' wishes for a wake and Catholic burial in Florida.

He said that Michael Schiavo has asked the chief medical examiner for Pinellas County to perform an autopsy to prove the extent of her brain damage.

Felos also derided simmering legal appeals by the state of Florida to intervene and take custody of Schiavo as "shameful" and "disgusting."

Yet, even with legal and political machinations essentially over, the family and supporters persisted. Schindler family spokesman Randall Terry said they had arranged for the Rev. Jesse Jackson to appear here today. Yesterday, activists traveled to Washington to press for another 11th-hour intervention. After a rain-soaked protest outside the White House and a meeting with top legal staffers to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), they acknowledged that hopes for legislative intervention were all but extinguished.

The Rev. Patrick Mahoney, a Schindler family spokesman, said he still planned to ask the Justice Department to take Schiavo into protective custody.

But, he said, "We are not Don Quixote, chasing windmills. We understand that the options are dwindling quickly."

Andrew Metz reported from Florida and Craig Gordon reported from Washington.