Microsoft Word Elisabeth Kubler-Ross On Death And Dying doc

PATIENT: Yes. I can tell you another thing. Last year I was discharged here. I had to go home in 
our own hospital in a wheelchair because the leg was broken. It was a pathological fracture. And all 
the kind people that pushed that wheelchair just drove me to distraction because they pushed me to 
where they wanted me to go, not where I wanted to go. And I couldn't always tell them where I 
wanted to go. I would rather have the  pain in my arms, to push myself to the lavatory than to have 
to tell everybody where I wanted to go and then to have them wait outside and give me a time that I 
had to use the washroom. You see what I mean? They would call me very independent and that, 
and yet I wasn't. I had to maintain my dignity because they'd destroy it for me. I don't think that 
when I really need help I would reject it in the sense that I did. But this kind of help a lot of people 
give gives one a problem. You know? In their kindness and that I know it's goodwill, but I can't 
wait 'til they get out. For instance, we have one Sister that takes care of us and she offers all of 
these things and then she feels rejected if you don't accept it. Well, I would feel guilty. I know she 
has a brace on her back. They assign these to the infirmary that aren't that well, these seventy-
seven-year-old Sisters. Well, I get up and crank my own bed before I'd ask one of those. But if she 
offers to crank it and I refuse, she feels like I'm rejecting her as a nurse. So I kind of have to grit my 
teeth and hope she won't come the next day and tell me how much pain she had in her back all 
night and couldn't sleep because I'm going to feel like I caused it. 
 
CHAPLAIN: Hm .... she makes you pay for it. 
 
PATIENT: Yes. 
 
CHAPLAIN: Can I switch...? 
 
DOCTOR: You will tell us when you are getting tired, right? 
 
PATIENT: Yes, go ahead. I've got all day to rest. 
 
CHAPLAIN: In terms of your own faith, what has your illness done 
 
to your faith? Has it strengthened it, weakened it, your belief in God? 
 
PATIENT: I don't say that my illness has because I've never thought of it in those terms. I wanted 
to give myself to God as a nun. I wanted to be a doctor and go to the missions. Well, I haven't done 
any of those things. You see, I've never left the country. I've been ill many years. I know now that it 
was- I had decided what I wanted to do for God. I was attracted to these things and I thought they 
were his will. But evidently they are not. So I kind of resigned, even though if I ever get well, I still 
would want the same things. I still would want to go in and study for medicine. This, I think a 
doctor in the missions is a tremendous thing, more than a nurse even because governments put such 
limitations on nurses. 
 
But, my faith, I think, received its greatest shaking here. Not through the illness, but through a man 
who was a patient across the hall. A Jewish man who was very kind. We met up in X-ray, in that 
little cubicle there. W e were both waiting for an X-ray. All of a sudden I heard this voice and he 
said to me, "What are you so damned happy about?" And I looked at him and I said, "Well, I'm not 
particularly happy, but I'm not afraid of what's going to happen if that's what you mean." He had a 
real kind of cynical look on his face. Well, that's how we met and we found out that we were across 

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the hall from each other more or less. And he is Jewish, and he does not practice any tradition and 
he has a contempt for most of the rabbis that he has met. So, he came over and he told me that there 
really isn't a God. That we made him up because we needed one. Now, I had never thought of that. 
He really believed this. I think he did because he doesn't believe in an after world. At the same time 
we had a nurse who was an agnostic and she said that sure, maybe there was a God that started the 
world. They talked about this to me. I think that that's what you want to talk about. They started it. 
And she said to me, "But he sure doesn't take care of the world since then." Well, I had never really 
met people like this until I came down here. You know, it was the first time I had to evaluate my 
faith. Meaning every time I say, "Well, sure there's a God. Look at nature and that." This is 
something that somebody had taught me. 
 
CHAPLAIN: They were challenging you? 
 
PATIENT: Yes. And also, I mean, well, the people that had taught me. Were they any more right 
than these people that had figured this stuff out? Meaning, I found out that I didn't have a religion. I 
had somebody else's religion. And this is what M. did to me. M. is the one, you know. And he'd 
always say something sarcastic or this nurse would say, "I don't know why I take care of the Roman 
Catholic Church so much when I hate it so much." I mean, this was when she'd hand me a pill. This 
was to get a rise out of me, a gentle one. But M. really tried to be reverent for my sake. He would 
say, "What do you want to talk about?" He'd say, "I want to talk about Barabbas." I'd say, "Well, 
M., you can't talk about Barraba's instead of Christ," and he'd say, "Well, what's the difference, 
really. Don't feel bad, Sister." And he would try to be reverent and respectful, but he was always 
challenging me: Like it was a whole hoax, you know? 
 
DOCTOR: You like him? 
 
PATIENT: I do. I still do. 
 
DOCTOR: Is this happening now? Is this somebody who is here now? 
 
PATIENT: No, this happened the second time I was hospitalized here. But we have always 
remained friends. 
 
DOCTOR: Do you still have contact with him? 
 
PATIENT: He was here the other day. Yes, he sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers. But from 
him I actually got my faith. Really, it's my own faith now. And it's faith, it isn't theory of someone 
else, meaning I don't understand God's way and many things that happen, but I believe that God is 
greater than I am and when I look at the young people dying, and their parents, and everyone says 
what a waste and that, I can see. I say, "God is love," and I mean it now. It isn't words, I really 
mean it. And that he, if he is love, then he knows that this moment of this person's life is their best 
moment and if they had lived longer, if they had lived less, he couldn't give them as much of 
eternity or they would have in eternity a punishment that would be worse than it would be now. I 
think in his love, this is how I can accept the deaths of the young and the innocent and that. 
 
DOCTOR: Do you mind if I ask some very personal questions? 
 

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