The Friday lunch crowd at Jimmy's Eastside Diner was starting to dwindle. Jerita Collins, a waitress everyone calls Shorty, was carrying several plates when she noticed the television behind the counter airing a Washington, D.C., news conference featuring House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

''It is now 1 o'clock on the East Coast, the time preordained by a Florida state judge to allow for denial of food and water to Terri Schiavo,'' the Texas Republican declared. ``That act of barbarism can be and must be prevented.''

Across the bottom of the screen CNN noted a judge temporarily stopped Terri Schiavo's feeding tube from being removed because Congress had issued subpoenas for the brain-damaged woman to appear in Washington.

As DeLay spoke, Shorty stared at the TV and shook her head. ''This is wrong,'' she said. ``This is incredibly wrong. How can they interfere like this?''

Shorty, 57, a waitress at the Biscayne Boulevard diner for 35 years, should know.

''Two years ago,'' she said, ``I had to make the same decision for my son. It was the hardest thing I ever did. You don't plan on your children dying before you do. You don't even want to think about it.

''But if you love your child,'' she continued, tears welling up in her eyes, ``sometimes you have to let them go.''

Shorty's son, Jerry, was 36 when he died in 2003 from pancreatic cancer. He wasn't married. He had one child who was a minor, so the decisions fell to her.

''Toward the end, he didn't want to be kept alive,'' she said. ``But I wanted him to live. I didn't want him to go. The hospital, they had to tie his hands down so that he couldn't pull his own tubes out.

'After a while, I realized he was ready. I told him how much I loved him and I didn't want him to continue to suffer because of me. He couldn't talk anymore, so he wrote me a note. It said, `Forgive me.' And I looked at it and I said, 'For what? For dying?' And he shook his head yes.''

He died a few days later, on Dec. 29, from a heart attack. By then, Shorty had signed directives for her son's care, including instructions not to resuscitate him if his heart stopped.

On the TV, another politician talked about saving Schiavo.

''These politicians,'' Shorty hissed, her hands trembling with emotion. ``They're just playing a game. It's not about her anymore, it's about them getting what they want. It's about them wanting to look good in front of the people who are pro-life. I'm against abortion, too, but I believe each person has their own right to decide. You know in your heart what is right for you and you have to live with any decision you make.''