5 Stages of Death

Unlike much of the population, I luckily was never close to someone that has

died, but my aunt Edna has. Tonight she came by my house and allowed me to

interview her and how she and her loved ones grieved over the deaths of both of her

parents. Both parents died of colon cancer, the father died at age 83 in 2003 and the

mother died at age 76 in 2006. Three things we talked about were how she felt about

the death/how she dealt with it internally, how others in her family dealt with it and how it

helped my aunt, and how it affects her in life right now.

Something that surprised me greatly was how my aunt dealt with the losses. For

one she is very religious, and didn’t seem to find the answer through faith. She had said

in the beginning she was angry at God, and that even towards the end of her grieving

she found very little comfort in religion. Something that helped her cope was knowing

that her parents were able to die in peace and had lived their lives to the fullest, and

what I really liked was that her mother was able to forgive and absolve of herself of guilt

through traveling all over the country to say goodbye to everybody personally. Her

parents also knew they would die years before and accepted it, as Morrie Schwartz did.

This also gave her many years beforehand to grieve and made it easier when it actually

happened. Something that was hard for my aunt is visiting their graves, something I

thought would have been comforting. She said it would bring out the depression and

anger within her because it would just remind of the pain involved with letting her

parents go. Even though they lived beyond life expectancy, my aunt’s other relatives

had lived into their nineties, making her feel cheated out of ten more happy years. Lastly

she told me that she had experienced all stages of grief, but not bargaining because

that would just make her feel more sad and desperate. An...