Reminders of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

 

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was a Swiss-born American psychiatrist, author, and pioneer in the fields of near-death studies, hospice care, palliative care, and bioethics. She is best known for developing a model which outlines the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—first introduced in her seminal 1969 book On Death and Dying. This work revolutionized the way the medical community and the public approach death and dying, helping to break long-standing taboos around the subject.

In 1970, I shared four hours on a bench seat on a Greyhound bus with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, traveling from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was a first-semester freshman returning home for the weekend from college. Elisabeth was on a speaking tour to promote her recently published work On Death and Dying. Sometime in my brief academic exposure I had somehow heard her name and was vaguely familiar with her area of expertise before I boarded the bus, even though at the time she was still not well known. After half a century I still recall her appearance, demeanor and mild Germanic accent. We had conversation without gaps the entire journey, I fondly recall. Mostly I listened, except for a good amount of questions. The endearing photo above is from her later years and does not match my recall of her hair as being quite straight and short-cut. The large spectacles and generous smile, however, looked much the same.

She transitioned through death in 2004 at the age of 78, but she still comes to mind from time to time. With my recent blog posts on the experience of death and what to expect thereafter, she has seemingly been whispering in my ear of late, pointing me toward resources that might be helpful.

I have probably crossed paths with more than my share of influential people, some noteworthy celebrities and some not, over the course of a lifetime. Still being of somewhat sound mind and excellent memory, the people who made lasting impressions on me have never really disappeared, and continue to make for good stories. I reflect upon what lasting impact such an encounter with Kübler-Ross, and others, made upon me at such a young, impressionable, and receptive age. As I read through her memorable quotes below, I recognize a corresponding reflection of my own thinking... and I wonder... did the seeds of ideas she shared with me that day find root in the rich soil of my youth and have they, in turn, gone on to nurture the thinking of many others that I have touched in one way or another over the years?

It is a measure that one may never be able to account for, but out of an affinity for her thinking I suspect this is how you go about changing the world in a practical sense – one idea, one person at a time. With that in mind, I am encouraged to continue seeding the world with interesting and provocative ideas that may continue to bloom and make the world a better place.

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.”

“The opinion which other people have of you is their problem, not yours.”

“It is very important that you only do what you love to do. You may be poor, you may go hungry, you may lose your car, you may have to move into a shabby place to live, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do. Otherwise, you will live your life as a prostitute, you will do things only for a reason, to please other people, and you will never have lived. and you will not have a pleasant death.”

“There is within each one of us a potential for goodness beyond our imagining; for giving which seeks no reward; for listening without judgment; for loving unconditionally.”

“There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.”

“It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up - that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.”

“We think sometimes we're only drawn to the good, but we're actually drawn to the authentic. We like people who are real more than those who hide their true selves under layers of artificial niceties”

“There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.”

“There are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt. It's true that there are only two primary emotions, love and fear. But it's more accurate to say that there is only love or fear, for we cannot feel these two emotions together, at exactly the same time. They're opposites. If we're in fear, we are not in a place of love. When we're in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear.”

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

“I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.”

“Why should I focus all my time on being productive so that someday I can enjoy my life? I'm enjoying it now.”

“When I die I'm going to dance first in all the galaxies...I'm gonna play and dance and sing.”

“All events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

“If we could raise one generation with unconditional love, there would be no Hitlers. We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives.

Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.”

“Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.”

“Everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences.”

“It is very important that you only do what you love to do. You may be poor, you may go hungry, you may lose your car, you may have to move into a shabby place to live, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do.”

“My patients taught me not how to die, but how to live.”

“Lots of my dying patients say they grow in bounds and leaps, and finish all the unfinished business. But assisting a suicide is cheating them of these lessons, like taking a student out of school before final exams. That's not love, it's projecting your own unfinished business”

“Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body. Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment”

“Today, in our “shut up, get over it, and move on” mentality, our society misses so much, it’s no wonder we are a generation that longs to tell our stories.”

“It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.”

“The more you learn, the harder the lessons get.”

“The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.”

“When someone is telling you their story over and over, they are trying to figure something out.”

“We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it. Tell a counselor how angry you are. Share it with friends and family. Scream into a pillow. Find ways to get it out without hurting yourself or someone else. Try walking, swimming, gardening—any type of exercise helps you externalize your anger. Do not bottle up anger inside. Instead, explore it. The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love.”

“you are worthy and lovable, just as you are, on your own.”

“Simple people with less education, sophistication, social ties, and professional obligations seem in general to have somewhat less difficulty in facing this final crisis than people of affluence who lose a great deal more in terms of material luxuries, comfort, and number of interpersonal relationships. It appears that people who have gone through a life of suffering, hard work, and labor, who have raised their children and been gratified in their work, have shown greater ease in accepting death with peace and dignity compared to those who have been ambitiously controlling their environment, accumulating material goods, and a great number of social relationships but few meaningful interpersonal relationships which would have been available at the end of life.”

“That’s really what grief has taught me. That I can survive. I used to be afraid that if I experienced grief it would overcome me and I wouldn’t be able to survive the flood of it, that if I actually felt it I wouldn’t be able to get back up. It’s taught me that I can feel it and it won’t swallow me whole. But we come from a culture where we think people have to be strong. I’m a big believer in being vulnerable, open to grief. That is strength. You can’t know joy unless you know profound sadness. They don’t exist without each other.”

“I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.”

“I think that modern medicine has become like a prophet offering a life free of pain. It is nonsense. The only thing I know that truly heals people is unconditional love.”

“Your sorrow is the inevitable result of circumstances beyond your control,”

“Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.”

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

“As difficult as it is to endure, depression has elements that can be helpful in grief. It slows us down and allows us to take real stock of the loss. It makes us rebuild ourselves from the ground up. It clears the deck for growth. It takes us to a deeper place in our soul that we would not normally explore.”

“Birth is not a beginning and death is not an ending. They are merely points on a continuum.”

“This time, I heard a loud voice, literally heralding the reality that my daughter was never coming back. This time the depression had no walls, ceiling, or floor. It felt even more endless than before and, once again, I had to deal with this old familiar guest. I learned the only way around this storm was through it.”

“A ship exists on the ocean, even if it sails out beyond the limits of our sight. The people in the ship have not vanished; they are simply moving to another shore.”

“We often tend to ignore how much of a child is still in all of us.”

“You can become a channel and a source of great inner strength. But you must give up everything in order to gain everything. What must you give up? All that is not truly you; all that you have chosen without choosing and value without evaluating, accepting because of someone else’s extrinsic judgment, rather than your own; all your self-doubt that keeps you from trusting and loving yourself or other human beings.”

“The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.”

“It is very important that you do only what you love to do. You may be poor, you may go hungry, you may live in a shabby place, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days, you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do.”

“We’re expected to go back to work immediately, keep moving, to get on with our lives. But it doesn’t work that way. We need time to move through the pain of loss. We need to step into it, really to get to know it, in order to learn”

“It might be helpful if more people would talk about death and dying as an intrinsic part of life just as they do not hesitate to mention when someone is expecting a new baby.”

“The wholeness we seek lives here, with and within us, now, in reality.”

“There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

“Dying is something we human beings do continuously, not just at the end of our physical lives on this earth.”

“The beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.”

“Death has a cruel way of giving regrets more attention than they deserve.”

“When you compare losses, someone else’s may seem greater or lesser than your own, but all losses are painful.”

“if you go and dance at a lot of weddings,

you'll cry at a lot of funerals.

if you were at the beginning of many moments,

you'll be there when they end.

if you have a lot of friends,

you'll experience that many break ups.

if you think that the loss you feel is great,

its because you've attempted that many things in your life.

if you made a lot of mistakes,

its better than having lived without doing anything at all.

it is not unhappiness to be unable to reach a star,

unhappiness is that you don't have a star that you cannot reach.”

“At the time of transition, your guides, your guardian angels, people whom you have loved and who have passed on before you, will be there to help you. We have verified this beyond a shadow of a doubt, and I say this as a scientist. There will always be someone to help you with this transition.”

“Most people’s initial reaction to sad people is to try to cheer them up, to tell them not to look at things so grimly, to look at the bright side of life. This cheering-up reaction is often an expression of that person’s own needs and that person’s own inability to tolerate a long face over an extended period. A mourner should be allowed to experience his sorrow, and he will be grateful for those who can sit with him without telling him not to be sad.”

“We do things hopefully because they add life to our living, but not with the illusion they will help us escape death when our time comes.”

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

“we are not accustomed to the emotional upheaval that accompanies a loss. People experience a wide array of emotions after a loss, from not caring to being on edge to feeling angry or sad about everything. We can go from feeling okay to feeling devastated in a minute without warning. We can have mood swings that are hard for anyone around us to comprehend, because even we don’t understand them.”

“Simple people with less education, sophistication, social ties, and professional obligations seem in general to have somewhat less difficulty in facing this final crisis than people of affluence who lose a great deal more in terms of material luxuries, comfort, and number of interpersonal relationships.”

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

“Grief will happen either as an open healing wound or as a closed festering wound, either honestly or dishonestly, either appropriately or inappropriately.”

“Facing death means facing the ultimate question of the meaning of life. If we really want to live we must have the courage to recognize that life is ultimately very short, and that everything we do counts.”

“so many ways, loss shows us what is precious, while love teaches us who”

“Just as we judge death as a failure, we feel relationships have failed if they do not last. The same way we say the only complete and successful life is one that lasted ninety-five years, we feel that the only successful and complete relationships are those that last forever. The reality is that relationships are successful and heal us even if they only last six months. They do what they are supposed to. When they are no longer needed, they are complete and successful.

Unfortunately, we don't always know that relationships are complete and successful.”

“There are dreams of love, life, and adventure in all of us. But we are also sadly filled with reasons why we shouldn’t try. These reasons seem to protect us, but in truth they imprison us. They hold life at a distance. Life will be over sooner than we think. If we have bikes to ride and people to love, now is the time.”

“How, then, do we know when a patient is giving up “too early” when we feel that a little fight on his part combined with the help of the medical profession could give him a chance to live longer? How can we differentiate this from the stage of acceptance, when our wish to prolong his life often contradicts his wish to rest and die in peace? If we are unable to differentiate these two stages we do more harm than good to our patients, we will be frustrated in our efforts, and will make his dying a painful last experience.”

“Why does tomorrow seem to hold so much more possibility for happiness or power than today?

Because we delude ourselves in the game of more, losing our power no matter how we play the game. And the game of more keeps us in a place of lack, feeling not good enough. Should we get what we want, we feel even worse because it's still not enough. We're still unhappy. If only we had a little more. We don't realize that simplicity is what matters.”