Now her husband can grieve her passing of over a decade ago.
Theresa Marie Schindler grew up in a middle-class suburb of Philadelphia, the oldest of three children. She was shy and her pet hamsters and birds outnumbered her human friends.
Sometimes she giggled, but most of the time she was quiet, according to a friend who was a bridesmaid at her wedding.
"She didn't like the limelight," she said. "How ironic is that?"
By the time Terri was 16, attending an all-girl Roman Catholic high school, she was very anxious about her weight. She weighed nearly 18 stones, but went on a diet and rapidly lost about seven stones.
Soon after, she met Michael Schiavo, apparently the first young man to show an interest in her, and in 1984, they married. Moving to Florida and deciding to start a family, Terri had trouble getting pregnant.
By now, she weighed just under eight stones and delighted that she felt good in a bikini for the first time. In reality, though, she had an eating disorder. Doctors believe her suspected bulimia was the primary cause of her collapse when she was 26.
For the majority of her life, she starved her body of nutrients to be thin. So when she was 'sort of' living, wasn't the feeding tube removal simply an act to further her initial cause?