Michael and Jodi Schiavo were in New York City on Saturday as part of a book promotion.
Posted on 03/28/2006 7:19:33 AM PST by NYer
CLEARWATER - The one-story brick house sits in a carefully tended yard in a cul de sac, a gray Honda minivan parked in the driveway shaded by trees. Hospice, the license plate says, Every day is a gift .
Inside, he reads his daughter to sleep and changes his son's diapers. He steps over disregarded toys and animal books and escapes with the Sopranos and Extreme Home Makeover , slipping happily into someone else's drama. He works 12-hour days to keep the bills at bay and yawns as he sits on the couch. She reminds him to take out the trash, and he does.
This is Michael Schiavo's new life. Life after Terri.
Every day is a gift.
* * *
In the year since Terri Schiavo died the most public of deaths, Michael still leads two different lives.
He guards his privacy but has written a book about the years-long political and ethical battle he waged to remove his wife's feeding tube. He fails to keep up with happenings in Tallahassee and Washington yet has started his own political action committee. He removes all signs of his first wife from his house yet welcomes recognition and comments from strangers about what he did for her.
The book, Terri: The Truth , which will be released in bookstores today, calls for education about living wills and eating disorders and for fighting politicians, activists, anyone intervening in end-of-life decisions.
In his first newspaper interview since Terri died, Mike - known by the world as Michael but called Mike by family members and friends - tells the St. Petersburg Times that a lot has happened to him in the last year, but not much has changed.
He buried his wife. Changed jobs. Got married. Was promoted.
But much of the bitterness remains, dividing the family, dividing America.
These days, there are only flashes of the elusive, arrogant Michael Schiavo the world got to know. He's more reflective now but still has to remind himself sometimes not to get angry.
"This was the biggest right to die case in history. This will never ever go away. So everybody has to learn to live with it and just get on," he said in a lengthy, wide-ranging interview last week. "I can't make it go away. It will always be there. But you can teach yourself how to move on."
Has he taught himself to move on? Not quite, he said, but he's working on it.
* * *
After his wife's death on March 31, 2005, Mike left town for two months. He and his longtime girlfriend, Jodi Centonze, took their two young children to a friend's beach house.
Mike, a registered nurse, took the extended time off from work at the Pinellas County Jail after his co-workers donated vacation days to him. They contributed so many days he gave some back.
The family returned to their home in Countryside where they had lived quietly for years, before the case ever landed in court.
The four-bedroom house with the sage green trim and enclosed swimming pool sits alongside five other houses. It was there that camera crews camped out on the sidewalk and activists threw roses for Terri on the front lawn.
Mike helps supervise the 150 nurses who care for the jail's 3,600 inmates. His schedule is never the same two weeks in a row. These days he comes home at 7 p.m. It used to be midnight.
Jodi, whom Mike calls Jo, had worked her way from file clerk to vice president at an insurance agency when she quit in 2000 after the company was sold. She stays home with their kids now and the family lives off Mike's annual salary of $68,500.
Three-year-old Olivia loves all princesses from Cinderella to Belle. She prances around the house in her bathing suit, hoping for time in the pool. She attends a Catholic preschool three days a week.
Nicholas, 2, likes Thomas the Tank Engine, climbing and beating up on his sister. He never tires of stuffing big chunks of bananas in his mouth.
"Meow. Meow," Nicky grins. No one knows where he got that. The family has a dog, a golden retriever named Samantha.
The couple have never considered moving from Pinellas County where his former in-laws, the Schindlers, still live and where Schiavo has been a household name for years.
"Why should I?" asked Mike, 42, wearing shorts and a T-shirt while eating his usual chicken Caesar salad from a favorite Italian restaurant on a recent Sunday night.
Mike notices strangers nudging each other when they catch sight of him in a restaurant or shop. Every few days, someone will approach him.
"They talk. They whisper. When they say something to me, it's always complimentary," he said. "I had one gentleman tell me the other day that I'm his hero."
Jodi, 41, is never recognized. In the dozen years she has known and loved Mike, she has never attended a court hearing or spoken publicly. Until now.
Almost at the last minute, Jodi has decided to join Mike as he embarks on a week's worth of national publicity to talk about the book. She will appear on at least three national shows.
"How do you prepare for that? I don't know. You never know what people are going to say or do to you," she said, curled up on the couch wearing jeans with her curly brown hair pulled back. "I am not embarrassed or ashamed of who I am."
Inside their house, there is no sign of Terri. Photos of her are stored under the bed in the master bedroom, where Jodi worked with a professional decorator to develop their sophisticated dark wood and animal motif.
Mike packed away years of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, documents and letters about Terri in two huge plastic bins. They sit in the garage, alongside an old dining room table and outdated toys.
He said he will pull the boxes out one day when his children are old enough to hear about Terri. He hopes they will be proud.
* * *
Mike and Jodi met in July 1993. Mike was visiting a friend, who is an orthodontist. Jodi was sitting in the waiting room.
It had been three years since Terri's heart mysteriously stopped in 1990, depriving her brain of oxygen and leaving her in what her doctors called a persistent vegetative state.
Mike and Jodi became friends, and he said he gradually realized he was falling in love with her. He said he broke up with her three or four times as he struggled with the guilt of loving two women at the same time. He worried about dragging Jodi into his messy life.
"I knew the score when I met him," she said. "I didn't expect Mike to turn his back on Terri, just to move on to an easier life with me."
He eventually asked Jodi to marry him in October 1994. She said yes, though she felt uncomfortable wearing a ring at first. They bought a home together in 1995 and years later decided to have children without knowing when they would marry.
Mike and Jodi were together through almost every legal decision about Terri, through the entire battle with the Schindlers, through the political fight. These days, it's Jodi, even more than Mike, who can't seem to stop talking about the case, constantly steering their conversations back to the Schindlers, the anger still apparent after all these years.
Jodi said she felt like she knew Terri from Mike and his large family. Early on they often misspoke and called her Terri.
After Mike's mother died, Jodi took over the Terri chores. With help from nurses and aides, Jodi did Terri's laundry each week and shopped for the clothes, makeup and perfume Mike insisted she keep wearing in bed.
Jodi visited Terri once, in 2000. Judge George Greer ordered that the feeding tube be removed. It was supposed to be the end, and Jodi wanted to say goodbye.
In March 2005, Terri Schiavo was still alive and her case had become a national cause. Mike still was arguing for her feeding tube to be removed; her parents still were arguing against it, saying she could recover. Court appeals were exhausted. Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature had tried to intervene on the side of Terri's parents. Congress and President Bush were about to step in.
As protesters and TV cameras camped out at their house, Jodi worried about their children. She asked Mike something she had never asked before: Give up the fight.
They argued for hours until he agreed. Then he called his attorney, George Felos.
Felos reminded him the case was now bigger than Terri Schiavo. He said it was about everyone who wanted to be able to refuse medical treatment, everyone who didn't want the government to intervene in their lives.
Mike told Jodi he had changed his mind, that he would not walk away. Jodi did. She packed her bags and left with the kids.
"I was done," she said. "It was no longer Mike and the Schindlers. It was Mike and the governor and then Mike and the president. Forget it already. This is crazy. You are just one little person from Florida. Enough already."
She came back the next morning.
Mike and Jodi planned to wait until April 2006 - a full year after Terri's death - to get married. Friends persuaded Jodi to stop caring what people would think and move up the date.
The invitations were mailed in early December. Word didn't leak until the day before the Jan. 21 ceremony. Jodi's wedding planner used her last name for most arrangements. Jodi bought her dress under her mother's maiden name. Even the photographer was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. The first one refused.
About 90 people attended the wedding at a Catholic church in Safety Harbor and reception at East Lake Country Club where everything from the bridesmaids' dresses to the M&Ms, the couple's favorite, fit in with a black and white theme.
At each place setting was a note announcing that a donation had been made to Hospice of the Florida Suncoast in memory of Mike and Jodi's parents. And in memory of Terri.
At the wedding, Mike wore his new wedding band, a circle of diamonds almost 3 carats in weight. He asked Jodi Schiavo if it would be okay if he also wore another ring, one he fashioned long ago out of diamonds from Terri's wedding ring. She said yes.
"It's always been Mike, Terri and me," she said softly.
* * *
Mike doesn't read the daily newspaper that lands on his front walk. He doesn't follow the Florida Legislature or Congress either.
But he knows he needs to start. He has formed a political action committee, TerriPAC, to raise money and challenge the politicians who tried to intervene in his effort to remove Terri's feeding tube. He has raised $10,000 so far.
"People who got involved in my life should have never gotten involved," he said. "If they can do it to me, they can do it to you. They are voted and elected in to run the country, not my life. Or anybody else's life."
Mike said he hopes his book will spur more interest in his cause and is spending this week in New York trying to drum up sales with appearances on NBC's Today Show and ABC's The View , among others.
He said he has no plan to seek public office, though he said "quite a few people" asked him to run for U.S. Senate.
Mike said he won't earn any money from the PAC or from what he expects to be regular speaking engagements. He won't say what he received for writing the book.
Mike and Jodi Schiavo switched from registered Republicans to registered Democrats after Terri died. Mike said it's not about partisan politics and said he will support Republicans or Democrats, even though it was the GOP majority in the Legislature and Congress that tried to prolong Terri's life.
He plans to endorse candidates this year in many races, including the Florida governor's race. Both Democratic candidates, state Sen. Rod Smith and U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, vocally opposed legislative efforts to reinsert the tube.
* * *
Terri was cremated and her ashes buried at a cemetery in Clearwater. A brass grave marker inscribed with the words "I kept my promise" and a simple marble bench overlook a pond with a fountain in the center.
Jodi Schiavo helped find possible sites. Mike made the final decision.
"I think Terri would have been very proud and very happy," Mike said. "I did what she wanted. She's set free."
Mike will fly home from New York on Friday, the anniversary of Terri's death. He wants some time alone, some time to do something private just for her.
But first a car will be waiting to take him to tape an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
should read "After his wife's murder ...
Catholic Ping - Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
This is barf-worthy on so many levels, it's mind-boggling.
One thing in particular, though: "...At the wedding, Mike wore his new wedding band, a circle of diamonds almost 3 carats in weight."
Real men don't wear rings like that. Not REAL men. Never.
But he'll make a fortune,thanks to the very same crowd that made Michael Moore a multi-millionaire.
Jeb Bush for President /sarcasm off
Michael never thought about that conversation with Terri where she said she wanted to be starved to death until AFTER he got the money. Once he got that money, he immediately started using the money to kill her.
|
Open Letter to Michael Schiavo 3/25/2006 8:38:00 PM To: National Desk Contact: Jerry Horn of Priests for Life, 540-220-0095 WASHINGTON, March 25 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, and an eyewitness to Terri Schiavo's final hours, released the following open letter to Michael Schiavo tonight. Fr. Pavone will read it to a worldwide audience on an internationally broadcast religious service on Sunday morning, March 26: A year ago this week, I stood by the bedside of the woman you married and promised to love in good times and bad, in sickness and health. She was enduring a very bad time, because she hadn't been given food or drink in nearly two weeks. And you were the one insisting that she continue to be deprived of food and water, right up to her death. I watched her face for hours on end, right up to moments before her last breath. Her death was not peaceful, nor was it beautiful. If you saw her too, and noticed what her eyes were doing, you know that to describe her last agony as peaceful is a lie. This week, tens of millions of Americans will remember those agonizing days last year, and will scratch their heads trying to figure out why you didn't simply let Terri's mom, dad, and siblings take care of her, as they were willing to do. They offered you, again and again, the option to simply let them care for Terri, without asking anything of you. But you refused and continued to insist that Terri's feeding be stopped. She had no terminal illness. She was simply a disabled woman who needed extra care that you weren't willing to give. I speak to you today on behalf of the tens of millions of Americans who still wonder why. I speak to you today to express their anger, their dismay, their outraged astonishment at your behavior in the midst of this tragedy. Most people will wonder about these questions in silence, but as one of only a few people who were eyewitnesses to Terri's dehydration, I have to speak. I have spoken to you before, not in person, but through mass media. Before Terri's feeding tube was removed for the last time, I appealed to you with respect, asking you not to continue on the road you were pursuing, urging you to reconsider your decisions, in the light of the damage you were doing. I invited you to talk. But you did not respond. Then, after Terri died, I called her death a killing, and I called you a murderer because you knew -- as we all did -- that ceasing to feed Terri would kill her. We watched, but you had the power to save her. Her life was in your hands, but you threw it away, with the willing cooperation of attorneys and judges who were as heartless as you were. Some have demanded that I apologize to you for calling you a murderer. Not only will I not apologize, I will repeat it again. Your decision to have Terri dehydrated to death was a decision to kill her. It doesn't matter if Judge Greer said it was legal. No judge, no court, no power on earth can legitimize what you did. It makes no difference if what you did was legal in the eyes of men; it was murder in the eyes of God and of millions of your fellow Americans and countless more around the world. You are the one who owes all of us an apology. Your actions offend us. Not only have you killed Terri and deeply wounded her family, but you have disgraced our nation, betrayed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and undermined the principles that hold us together as a civilized society. You have offended those who struggle on a daily basis to care for loved ones who are dying, and who sometimes have to make the very legitimate decision to discontinue futile treatment. You have offended them by trying to confuse Terri's circumstances with theirs. Terri's case was not one of judging treatment to be worthless -- which is sometimes the case; rather, it was about judging a life to be worthless, which is never the case. You have made your mark on history, but sadly, it is an ugly stain. In the name of millions around the world, I call on you today to embrace a life of repentance, and to ask forgiveness from the Lord, who holds the lives of each of us in His hands. -- Fr. Frank Pavone Priests for Life is the nation's largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit http://www.priestsforlife.org. |
Yet, he says he makes 68,5 a year.
Where's all that extra money coming from?
Hmmmmm......aren't most grave markers are about the person who died, not the one who helped put them there?
This was a weird case. Everyone came out looking bad. Schiavo came out looking bad. The parents came out looking awful (and rightfully so). The pandering politicians who saw chances to exploit a family tragedy to score political points. The talk show hosts who saw this as a way to mislead people into excitment. Everyone. There are thousands of end of life choices made every year by families and spouses. Most are much less clear cut than this one and involve patients with more hope than Schiavo had. I fail to see why this one warranted congress coming back into session and the whole nations attention. I tend to fall with people like Boortz on this one. The woman had been in a coma for more than a decade. She had a zero percent chance of ever waking up (regardless of what some delusional and easily duped posters believe). She was a vegetable, had been a vegetable for a long time, and would always be a vegetable. At some point you have to let go when the soul has long since left the body. I'm a strongly pro-life person but this case was a really stupid one for some pro-lifers to get themselves in a tizzy over.
FWIW this is Boortz's take
"Virtually every single day across this country decisions are made to discontinue extraordinary medical intervention and people are allowed to proceed with the process of dying. In some cases feeding tubes are removed. More often ventilators are turned off. In one case a person starves to death, in another they are suffocated. It happens every day ... but you don't hear politicians screaming about murder. And why? Because those cases don't generate the media heat that this one has.
What makes the Terri Schiavo case different? One thing .. the Schindlers, her parents. I have every bit of sympathy in the world for Terri's parents, but they're living in a dream world. There is nothing left of their daughter .. nothing but a wasted body that transported her on this earth during her life. She is not there. In spite of their hysterical claims, Terri doesn't know who they are when they walk into her room, and she has no emotional response whatsoever when they leave. She is in a persistent vegetative state, not a coma. She will not suddenly sit up one day and ask what's been going on. Her body can sustain only the most basic functions. It will react to pain, but she has no conscious awareness of the pain. The body will react to other stimulus, such as loud noises or lights being turned on and off .. but, again, she has no conscious awareness of any kind as to what is happening around her. Plants react to light. You can hook up a household plant to a machine that can register changes in electrical charges within the plant and determine that the plant has reactions to changes in light and, in some cases, to people coming in and out of the room. Notice that we're describing a plant here .. a plant that has basically the same reactions to stimulus that Terri Schiavo has. The term "persistent vegetative state" wasn't just created out of thin air. Face it. Terri Schiavo has just about the same awareness of the world around her as a philodendron. "
"The congress of the United States worked into the early hours of this morning for one reason; to serve the interests of the so-called pro-life movement. This isn't about Terri Schiavo. It's about abortion. The anti-abortion movement saw an opportunity to take Terri's tragedy and turn it into a spectacular pageant in support of life. "
"We've heard much about torture in recent months ... the alleged torture of Muslim prisoners in Iraq. Can it be said that the Republicans are torturing the soul of Terri Schiavo, and doing it for votes?"
http://boortz.com/nuze/200503/03212005.html
She wan't "ill". She was a helpless mental cripple. It wasn't like there was some disease coursing through her system, and Michael failed to have the disease treated. She was brain damaged with a head full of spinal fluid, and Michael stopped having her fed. Lets keep the circumstances clear.
Both Michael Schiavo and George Felos are 2 ghouls. I don't know much about the wife but I hope she watches her back well. I hope nobody buys his book. Sad to say we treat death row inmates kinder when we kill them then what Terri went through. To say its a peaceful death is utterly disgusting. Maybe someday Michael will be in the same shape and his children will remember how peaceful a death by withholding food and water is. And perhaps he will die the same way, I hope it takes weeks.
I used the word "ill" for the sake of brevity.
'It's my turn to talk,' says Michael Schiavo
Q. You're a young man. Your life is ahead of you. When you look up the road, what do you see for yourself?
MS. I see myself hopefully finishing school and taking care of my wife.
Q. Where do you want to take care of your wife?
MS. I want to bring her home.
Q. If you had the resources available to you, if you had the equipment and the people, would you do that?
MS. Yes, I would, in a heartbeat.
Q. How do you feel about being married to Terri now.
MS. I feel wonderful. She's my life and I wouldn't trade her for the world. I believe in my marriage vows.
Q. You believe in your wedding vows, what do you mean by that?
MS. I believe in the vows I took with my wife, through sickness, in health, for richer or poor. I married my wife because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I'm going to do that.
.
.
I hate the St Pete Times. They are a vile, left wing DNC organ.
This Sunday their front page was their newest crusade - people aren't paying enough in property tax. They want to shoot down the "Save Our Homes" which limits tax increases on a homeowners property.
I won't even buy them for the coupons. I don't care if I save $50. That's how much I hate that paper.
Whoa, was it public knowledge at the time that Mike was a registered nurse and I am just forgetting? I'm an RN too and obviously got a very different intepretation of the dying and ethics classes.
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