Death: The Final Stage of Growth, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Prentice-Hall, 1975
Fear of death is the deepest and most profound negative
anticipation we create and is the fundamental fear from which all
others arise. Survival and avoidance of death are the purpose of all
biologically programed fears we experience and the only motivation for
killing or injuring others. And because we define our meaning and
existence in terms of the people, places and things in our life, even
lesser fears concerning loss are still rooted in the fear of death
which is imagined by most to be the ultimate loss.
Death: The final Stage of Growth is a very important book and a must
read for adults and teens of any state of health. It's authors give
intelligent, experienced and compassionate voice to what it means to
die. For any individual who is ready, this can provide a start to the
difficult process of accepting freely and without fear, our own
inevitable death.
Far from being morose or depressing, the experience of reading this
book, while emotionally challenging, is uplifting and positively
freeing. Ultimately, a "letting go" of the fear of death, is the
deepest and most profound acceptance an individual can allow, virtually
dispelling all lesser fears.
From the Back Cover. Why do we
treat death as a taboo? What are the sources of our fears? How do we
express our grief and accept the death of a person close to us? How can
we prepare for our own death? From her own personal views and
experiences and from comparisons with how our culture and others view
death and dying Elizabeth Kubler-Ross provides some answers to these
and other questions by offering a spectrum of viewpoints from ministers
and rabbis, doctors, nurses, sociologists, personal accounts by those
near death and their survivors. The author shows how through an
acceptance of our finiteness, we can grow; for death provides a key to
the meaning of human existence. Death offers each of us a chance to
discover life's true meaning by coming to terms with death as a part of
human development. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is a psychiatrist, a
world-renowned leader and authority on death and author of On Death and
Dying and Questions and Answers on Death and Dying.
From the Forward, By Joseph and
Laurie Braga "this, then, is the meaning of DEATH: The Final Stage of
Growth; All that you are and all that you've done and been is
culminated in your death. When you're dying, if you're fortunate enough
to have some prior warning (other than that we all have, all the time,
if we come to terms with our finiteness) you get your final chance to
grow, to become more truly who you really are, to become more fully
human. But you don't need to, nor should you wait until death is at
your doorstep before you start to really live. If you can begin to see
death as an invisible, but friendly, companion on your life's journey -
gently reminding you not to wait till tomorrow to do what you mean to
do - then you can learn to live your life rather than simply passing
through it."