Before we talk about the stages of physical death we will have a short discussion about what are commonly thought of as the stages of dying followed by a must read article by Meghan O’Rourke published in the New Yorker in 2010.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
When we think of stages in relation to dying, we naturally think of Kubler-Ross and her very well known 5 stages of grief from her landmark On Death and Dying, published in 1969. In general, individuals experience some or most of these stages in no defined order after being faced with the reality of their impending death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These are not really stages in the dying process but our reaction to the news that we will be dying, and therefore defined as grief. Therefore, it follows that the five stages have since been adopted by many as applying to the grieving process of the survivors of a loved one’s death, as well, and indeed, much later, Kubler-Ross followed her initial text with On Grief and Grieving.
In subsequent years we, (and Kubler-Ross herself) learned that the stages are not truly valid. Grieving is a varied, unpredictable and inherently messy process. Kubler-Ross herself had a complicated end of life process. An excellent article in the New Yorker, Good Grief will guide you some of her journey and through some of the current thinking about grief and the dying process. This is a good place to start before we talk about the actual physical process of dying itself.
