| Life and Death |
By: Lois Kellerman, Columnist, “Mother Knows Best”
On 1/23/06
She was born in Switzerland in 1926. One of three little girls tucked tight inside her mother’s womb; she came out first—a full two pounds of spunk drawing her first breath. During childhood she battled to keep that breath, coping with a life-threatening pneumonia. As her body ripened toward womanhood, war broke out across Europe.
| "When we hear about others dying it’s a time for us to be close and to think about how much we mean to each other." |
Her country, neutral and without an army, remained a small, beleaguered island of safety in a great storm. At the end of the war she joined a group working to heal a shattered continent. It was during this period that she stumbled across the image that would shape the rest of her life: It was a rough-hewn butterfly carved on the wall of a death camp.
Survivors explained to her that this image expressed the blissful experience some had described as they drew their last breaths. From cocoon to fluttering wings, the spiral of a life seemed to move ever upward, each step a transformation. Even in the most forlorn circumstances the human spirit still could reach peace.
At the time of this life-changing discovery, she didn’t know she would be returning to Switzerland, entering medical school, and in time, marrying an American student there. She didn’t know that she would then be moving with her husband to Denver, specializing in psychiatry (because, as a pregnant woman she couldn’t get a residency in pediatrics), lecturing on the process of dying, and in time moving to Chicago.
She didn’t know any of this, or about the remainder of her remarkable days, because she knew herself from the inside, as a person with fire in her heart and her belly. She knew herself from her attributes, not as we know her, from her history, with full names and titles and fame attached.
In 1969 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had her first book, On Death and Dying, published. It became an international best-seller and changed the way the world viewed the grieving process. We can study the stages of the process she described, from initial denial, through anger, bargaining, and depression, all the way to final acceptance. Understanding of the general process will help us greatly in caring for all those we know dealing with this inevitable process.
But our children need to know more essential things, like: Don’t be afraid, it’s part of life. When we hear about others dying it’s a time for us to be close and to think about how much we mean to each other. When a person dies, they don’t hurt anymore. In fact, they are filled with feelings of warmth and goodness.
Children, especially, need positive images that reflect your own deep-felt understandings. Here’s one:
I saw her last night in my dreams. She was walking over a bridge to a place of light and care. She waved to me, and I waved back, and the whole sky was full of light. Then I heard singing all around. We called out then to each other and when I closed my eyes I still heard the words:
“See ya.”
“See ya.”
Then each of us went our own way.
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