scrapbook

Kubler-Ross free at last

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the Swiss-born psychiatrist and author who won international fame for her landmark work on death and dying, had achieved peace when she died this week, a colleague said.

Dr Kubler-Ross, 78, who wrote the groundbreaking 1969 book On Death and Dying, died on Tuesday night of natural causes while surrounded by close friends and family in her home in Phoenix, her colleague David Kessler said on Wednesday.

Dr Kessler said Dr Kubler-Ross, also known for her pioneering work in hospice care, died with children playing in the room and the television she loved to watch playing in the background.

"I really believe we saw acceptance on her face, that she ultimately had found her peace," he said. "She was happy. She no longer was paralysed, she no longer was sick, she no longer was confined to a bed, to a room, to this world. She was free again."

Dr Kubler-Ross, who moved to Arizona nine years ago after a series of strokes, had just finished her second book with Dr Kessler, On Grief and Grieving.

During her 50-year career she established herself as an expert in the field, with more than 20 books, countless lectures and workshops on terminal illness and death. But it was her outline of the five stages of death - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - that would make her known to everyday people.

Born in Zurich as one of triplets, she wrote in her autobiography The Wheel of Life that her eyes were opened by a visit to a former Nazi concentration camp when she offered to work for the International Voluntary Service for Peace in 1945.

In 1957 she graduated from medical school at the University of Zurich and moved to New York after marrying Dr Manny Ross. It was while working at a New York hospital that she began her life's work with terminally ill patients.

Dr Kubler-Ross lectured throughout the 1970s on life after death. In a 1997 interview she said:

"[When I die] I'm going to dance first in all the galaxies ... I'm going to play and dance and sing."

[original article]

Posted by thinkum at August 26, 2004 03:29 PM