'On Death and Dying' authour who changed how society viewed terminally ill dies

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Kübler-Ross dead at 78

Author of 'On Death and Dying' forever changed how society viewed and treated the terminally ill

 

 

 

BY JAMIE TALAN

STAFF WRITER

 

August 26, 2004

 

 

Two days ago, surrounded by children, grandchildren and two close friends, the woman who made it acceptable and imperative to talk openly about death and dying was asked whether she was ready to "transition."

 

"Not yet," said Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, 78, who started the discussions on the death process more than 35 years ago.

 

 

Since 1995, she had suffered a series of strokes that left her partially paralyzed and found herself working through the very stages of dying she outlined in the 1969 book, "On Death and Dying." She told friends and family she experienced them all: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

 

"When will you know that you are ready?" her close friend, Brookes Cohen, asked at her bedside at an assisted-living facility in Scottsdale, Ariz.

 

"I will know it from my head to toe," she answered.

 

As hours passed, she lost the ability to talk, so her readiness went unacknowledged. She died Tuesday evening as her grandchildren played and the television blared in her room.

 

As word spread of her declining state, scores of family and friends had come to say good-bye. And they reported that, in the end, the small woman with the powerful message that became synonymous with her name met the good death.

 

"Elisabeth had always said that you die in character and die authentically," said David Kessler, a grief and loss therapist who co-wrote "Life Lessons" with Kübler-Ross and who was summoned to her bedside over the weekend. Kessler and Kübler-Ross closed the last chapter of her work life two weeks ago when she ordered him to send their editor a manuscript for their next book, "Grief and Grieving.Turn it in," she told Kessler. But he told her it needed further revisions. "We're done," she added.

 

After her health began to decline, she told him that "people love my stages. They just don't want me to be in one."

 

Kübler-Ross was born in 1926 in Switzerland. After graduating medical school at the University of Zurich in 1957, she headed to the United States. She quickly became "appalled by the standard treatment of dying patients" in New York, she wrote. Kübler-Ross had a rotating internship at Community Hospital in Glen Cove in 1958 and 1959.

 

But Kessler said that the roots of her experience were actually in her childhood: At age 8, she shared a hospital room with a girl who died alone in a bleak, sterile environment. Two years later, she traveled with her parents to visit a dying friend awash in flowers and visitors, surrounded by a large bay window. "That, she said, was her idea of a good death," Kessler added.

 

In 1968, she taught a then-novel course on death and dying for medical students at the University of Chicago. Through a one-way mirror, faculty and students would watch as she talked with a dying patient.

 

Dennis Klass, professor of religious studies at Webster University in St. Louis, assisted her during the course. "The subject was threatening in a culture where people had lost their way around dying," he said. "Death became the enemy in modern medical technology. The physician sitting and comforting the patient at the bedside was over. [instead] they were there trying to save them." Kübler-Ross wanted doctors to see that dying people can teach something. "Death is part of life" was her refrain.

 

Through the years, a spiritual message emerged from her teachings: As Klass explained it, "If we accept death, people can more meaningfully get in touch with their purpose in the world."

 

At the time, the approach "was rather revolutionary," said Stephen Connor, vice president of National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. Doctors thought it was all right not to tell patients about a fatal diagnosis.

 

"On Death and Dying" opened the door to the new movement that had begun in England. There are now more than 3,000 places where hospice care is delivered in the United States. Kübler-Ross went on to write 19 other books. "She was a guru," added retired Arizona State University professor Robert Kastenbaum, who worked in bereavement.

 

Kessler watched his mentor fight the effects of stroke, and wished death would end her suffering - even as she managed to write two more books. "Dying is nothing to fear," Kubler-Ross wrote. "It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you lived."

 

Kübler-Ross was divorced though she remained close to her former husband, Emanuel, until the end of his life in 1992. She is survived by two children, Ken and Barbara Ross, and two grandchildren. Kübler-Ross was a triplet and is survived by her sister Eva Bacher-Kübler. Another sister, Erika Faust-Kübler, died in 2002.

 

The five stagesof grief, from Kübler-Ross' book, "On Death and Dying":

 

Denial --"Ain't gonna happen to me.Only happens to other folks."

 

Anger --"Damn it.God must be doin'a BIG mistake!"

 

Bargaining --" Hey God,let me live long enough to see my granchildren grow up,will ya?"

 

Depression--"Kill me now God.Don't let me live another moment."

 

Acceptance--"OK God Thy will be done."