kubler-ross

She died recently, and I wanted to comment on her life before it is too long past and my comments irrelevant. I went to see her in 1975 or so, maybe 1976. She was just beginning then, beginning to be heard in nursing home land, which is where I spent eight hours of most days: four of them sobering up, the next four planning the next ambush on my sanity. She did a three day seminar which I was allowed to attend. What I remember is when she asked the crowd (nurses, nurses aides, some physicians) "What is it that you think when you walk into the room of a terminal patient? What is your real, gut level thought?" The answers ranged from the predictable "compassion" to the nearly brave "fear." She allowed the responses, then said, "Don't you really think, 'Don't die on me'?" I was with her all the way.

She influenced my experience of the dying and for that I am grateful. What I learned from her directly, beyond the stages of grief, is that there is no right or wrong way to die or to respond to dying. And she didn't believe, like many think, in euthanaisa. She maintained that love is the answer. A hopeful position to be sure. And for the unloved? Institutionalized love. Well, in my experience, that's hard to come by. And so my position on euthanizing human beings is alot like my other positions. I don't care so much about that. It happens all the time, in hospitals, in nursing homes, where professionals do the "slow walk" away from a person taking the final breaths. There are tacit agreements, as there should be, between physician and patient, that when the time comes, the time comes. The agreement that allowing death is not stopping life. It isn't front page news. And legislating something so personal, as we would with other personal matters, is questionable.

There. Bye bye Liz.