Watching the Dying Process Unfold

Swiss-American psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross developed the now well-known model of grief in 1969 in her book On Death and Dying. Although many people think her grief model is about what friends and family members go through when a loved one passes, she actually did the research for this theory with patients who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Kübler-Ross outlined denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance as what has been called the stages of grief. But she meant these designations as the processes we go through in adjusting to this news. More over, these responses won't necessarily go in any particular order for everyone.

Since getting a terminal prognosis myself back in January, I watched myself start out with acceptance. Given a 6-24 months timeframe seemed reasonable to me. I never wanted to enter my 80s.

Then perhaps I went into frustration and irritation of misplaced anger, with a touch of depressive hostility. The constant repetition of every care provider asking for my name and birth date drove me crazy. Even though I understood it as a rational safety mechanism, it irrationally hit me every time as the whole system being forgetful to the point of incompetence, driving me to the point of wanting to scream if not make up answers just to point out how annoying and ridiculous it feels to be asked that three times in the space of 15 minutes by nurse, doctor, and blood draw tech.

Within hours of being told I had stage four cancer I took on the bargaining process by starting to think about writing up this experience as another memoir. To read that memoir on this blog start with part one of The End Creeps Closer.

Last night's poem might have been me entering the denial process.