The Change we call death; Rice and Peas for the Soul - By Shirvington Hannays
Around the end of January of 2001, I walked into a bookstore in downtown Toronto, Canada and stood in front of a bookshelf of books on Death as if lead by some force outside my rational mind. If you knew me at that time, that was out of my character. I tried not to use the word death and tried as hard as I could to not think about it, certainly never using the word in the same sentence with my name.
Thanks to Elisabeth Kübler Ross, M.D., and her book “On Death and Dying” I was somewhat prepared me for May 6th later that year and certainly September 11th that same year. The book explores in plain and simple language a subject that to many is anything but plain and simple.
It skillfully highlights the author's seminal "stages of dying" or "stages of grief" model which is still widely quoted. According to the Kübler-Ross mode, there are five stages that a dying person goes through when they are told that they have a terminal illness. The five stages go in progression through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This model has been widely adopted by other authors and applied to many other situations where someone suffers a loss or change in social identity. The model is often used in bereavement work. Not all workers in the field agree with th Kübler-Ross model, and some critics feel the stages are too rigid.
Be cautioned that reading the book would not make you a superhuman or numb to the emotions or human reactions to the pains of death, as I found out four months after reading the book or on September 11th later that year. However since then I have had to deal with two more deaths of love ones. To which I can say I move from denial to acceptance very quickly. So in that that sense, yes, I can say I have truly grown to embrace death now more readily. However I am still ready to be open when it would be my time to confront my own death or that of another through the five stages, Ms. Kübler-Ross put forward. -- Shirvington Hannays (www.smahoo.com)
"Soon someone will say or do something the world will come to love and benefit from that you are too afraid to do or say NOW." - Shirvington Hannays - 05-03-2009
Around the end of January of 2001, I walked into a bookstore in downtown Toronto, Canada and stood in front of a bookshelf of books on Death as if lead by some force outside my rational mind. If you knew me at that time, that was out of my character. I tried not to use the word death and tried as hard as I could to not think about it, certainly never using the word in the same sentence with my name.
Thanks to Elisabeth Kübler Ross, M.D., and her book “On Death and Dying” I was somewhat prepared me for May 6th later that year and certainly September 11th that same year. The book explores in plain and simple language a subject that to many is anything but plain and simple.
It skillfully highlights the author's seminal "stages of dying" or "stages of grief" model which is still widely quoted. According to the Kübler-Ross mode, there are five stages that a dying person goes through when they are told that they have a terminal illness. The five stages go in progression through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This model has been widely adopted by other authors and applied to many other situations where someone suffers a loss or change in social identity. The model is often used in bereavement work. Not all workers in the field agree with th Kübler-Ross model, and some critics feel the stages are too rigid.
Be cautioned that reading the book would not make you a superhuman or numb to the emotions or human reactions to the pains of death, as I found out four months after reading the book or on September 11th later that year. However since then I have had to deal with two more deaths of love ones. To which I can say I move from denial to acceptance very quickly. So in that that sense, yes, I can say I have truly grown to embrace death now more readily. However I am still ready to be open when it would be my time to confront my own death or that of another through the five stages, Ms. Kübler-Ross put forward. -- Shirvington Hannays (www.smahoo.com)
"Soon someone will say or do something the world will come to love and benefit from that you are too afraid to do or say NOW." - Shirvington Hannays - 05-03-2009
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