Microsoft Word Elisabeth Kubler-Ross On Death And Dying doc

 
DOCTOR: What did you do? 
 
PATIENT: Actually, I was active general foreman in the main post office down here. I had worked 
myself to the point where I was in charge of the foremen. I had seven or eight foremen who 
accounted to me every night. Rather then dealing with just the help, I dealt with more or less 
operations. I had good prospects for advancement because I knew and enjoyed my work. I didn't 
begrudge any time that I spent on the job. I was always helping my wife when the kids were getting 
up. 
 
(P130) 
 
We hoped they would be out of the way and maybe we could enjoy some of the things that we had 
read about and heard about. 
 
DOCTOR: Like what? 
 
PATIENT: Traveling a little, I mean we never had a vacation. Our first child was a premature baby 
and it was touch and go for a long time. She was sixty-one days old before she came home. I still 
have a sack of receipts from the hospital at home now. I paid her bill out at two dollars a week and 
in those days I was only making about seventeen dollars a week. I used to get off the train and rush 
two bottles of my wife's breast milk to the hospital, pick up two empty bottles, come back to the 
station, and go on to my job in the city. I would then work all day and bring those two empty 
bottles home at night. And she had enough milk for, I guess, for all the premature kids in the 
nursery over there. We kept them pretty well supplied and this meant to me that we got over the 
hump with everything. I would soon be in a salary bracket where you don't have to pinch every 
nickel. It just meant for me that we would maybe sometime look forward to a planned vacation 
instead of, well, we can't go anywhere, this kid has to have some dental work, or something like 
that. That's all it meant to me. It meant a few good years of more or less relaxed living. 
 
DOCTOR: After a long, hard life of trouble. 
 
PATIENT: Well, most people put in a longer and harder struggle than I do. I never considered it 
much of a struggle. I worked in that foundry and we did piece work. I could work like a demon. I 
had fellows that came to my house and told my wife that I worked too hard. Well, she jumped all 
over me about that, and I would tell her it was a matter of jealousy when you work around men 
with muscle, they don't want you to have more muscle than they have and I definitely did, because 
wherever I went to work, I worked. And whenever there was any advancement, I made it, whatever 
advancement there was to be made. In fact, they called me into the office over where I was working 
and they told me when we make a colored foreman, you will be it. I was elated for a moment but 
when I went out-they said when-that could be anywhere 
 
from now to the year two thousand. So it deflated me to an extent that I had to work under those 
conditions. But still nothing was hard for me in those days. I had plenty of strength, I had my youth, 
and I just believed I could do anything. 
 

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DOCTOR: Tell me, Mr. J., now that you are not that young anymore, and maybe you can't do all 
those things anymore, how do you take it? Presumably there is no doctor who stands there with an 
injection, a medical cure. 
 
PATIENT: That's right. You learn how to take these things. You first get that realization that 
maybe you won't ever get well. 
 
DOCTOR: What does that do to you? 
 
PATIENT: It shakes you up, you try not to think about things like that. 
 
DOCTOR: Do you ever think about it? 
 
PATIENT: Sure, there are a lot of nights I don't sleep very well. I think about a million things 
during the night. But you don't dwell on those things. I had a good life as a child and my mother is 
still living. She comes out here quite often to see me. I can always run back over my mind and go 
over some incident that happened. We used to take the jalopy and travel within our area. We did 
quite a bit of traveling in those days when they had very few paved roads and the other roads were 
muddy. You'd get somewhere, stuck on a muddy road up to the hubcaps, and you might have to 
push or pull or something like that. And so I guess I had a pretty nice childhood, my parents were 
very nice. There was no harshness or ill temper in our house. It made for a pleasant life. I think in 
terms of those things and I realize I'm pretty well blessed because there has been a rare man put in 
this world who has nothing but misery. I look around and find that I have had what I call a few 
bonus days. 
 
DOCTOR: You have had a fulfilled life is really what you are saying. But does it make dying any 
easier? 
 
PATIENT: I don't think about dying. I think about living. I think, you know I used to tell the kids, 
they were coming up, I would tell them now, do your best under all circumstances, and I said lots 
of times you are still gonna lose. I said, now you remember in this life you have to be lucky. That 
was an expression I used. 
 
(P132) 
 
And I always considered myself lucky. I look back and I think of all the boys who came along with 
me and are in jail and various prisons and places like that. And I had as good a chance as they had 
but I didn't make it. I always pulled away when they were about to get started into something that 
wasn't right. I had a lot of fights on account of that, they think you are afraid. But it is better to be 
leary of those things and fight for what you believe in, then it is to kick in and say, well, I'll go 
along. Because invariably sooner or later you are involved in something that can start you off on a 
life that you can't reverse. Oh, they say you can pull yourself up by your boot straps and all that but 
you get yourself some kind of a record and the first thing that happens in your neighborhood, and I 
don't care how old you get to be, they pick you up and want to know where were you such and such 
a night. I was fortunate enough to steer clear of all of that. So when I look it all over I have to say 
that I've been lucky and I project that a little further. I still have a little luck left. I mean, I have had 

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