Michael Schiavo and his in-laws apparently are going to continue their fighting until the bitter end, bickering even over who will administer last rites to Terri Schiavo when she dies.
Schiavo Parents, Spouse Feud Over Her Fate (AP)
So bitter and vindictive is the family feud over whether Terri Schiavo lives or dies that her husband and parents couldn’t even agree on what priest should administer last rites or what should happen to her body after death.
Once embraced by them, Michael Schiavo hasn’t spoken to his in-laws, Bob and Mary Schindler, since 1993. The Schindlers have fought his effort to remove his brain-damaged wife’s feeding tube so she can die, painting him as an abusive monster who wants her out of the way so he can inherit her money and marry his longtime girlfriend. They’ve tried for more than a decade to have him removed as Terri’s guardian. Michael Schiavo says the Schindlers hold a grudge because he refused to share a $1 million medical malpractice award in his wife’s case, and says they lie when they insist their daughter is not in a persistent vegetative state as court-ordered doctors have determined .
Add years of vitriol from attorneys on each side and the hatred has reached the point where a relative began monitoring television last week so the Schindlers wouldn’t have to see their son-in-law on national news programs. Visiting schedules at Terri Schiavo’s hospice have been worked out so they don’t cross paths. “And these are the same two people that testified in the malpractice case … he was a wonderful son-in-law and you couldn’t ask for any better son-in-law,” said Michael Schiavo’s brother, Scott Schiavo. “But now he’s this, he’s that.”
Michael Schiavo has restricted who may visit his wife and when they can come, and a judge was asked recently to sort out such issues as whether the Schindlers could take photos of her before her death and what would happen to her body. “I think a lot of the reason Michael is doing this is because of vindictiveness and maybe anger toward my family for whatever reason,” said Terri Schiavo’s brother, Bobby Schindler. “It doesn’t make any sense to me why he’s doing this.”
Really? They’ve spent more than a decade doing everything they can to convince the public that he’s a monster who has been trying to kill their daughter and they can’t understand why he’s bitter?!
The Schindlers had asked Circuit Judge George Greer to allow Terri to be buried in Florida with her body intact, but the judge refused to intervene in Michael Schiavo’s plans to have her cremated and interred in their native Pennsylvania. In a court filing, the Schindlers insisted that Terri would not choose cremation. “To Mrs. Schiavo and her nuclear family, burial without cremation is a central tenet of the Roman Catholic faith,” the motion said. “They are wholly motivated by their religious belief that burial without cremation will comfort Mrs. Schiavo in death.”
These are some strange people.
