Microsoft Word Elisabeth Kubler-Ross On Death And Dying doc

interview the daughter was able to express some feelings of guilt, ambivalence, and resentment - 
both for having lived such an isolated life and more perhaps for being deserted. We encouraged her 
to express her feelings more often, to return to a part-time job in order to have some ties and 
occupations outside the sickroom, and made ourselves available if she needed someone to talk to. 
 
Returning with her to the sickroom, I again informed the patient of our discussion. I asked her for 
her approval to have her daughter only come part of the day to visit her. She looked us fully in our 
eyes, and, with a sigh of relief, closed her eyes again. A nurse who witnessed this encounter 
expressed her surprise at so much reaction. She was grateful to have observed this because the 
nursing staff had become quite attached to the patient and felt some discomfort themselves with the 
daughter's quiet agony and inability to express herself. The daughter found a part-time job and-to 
the pleasure of the staff-shared this news with her mother. Her visits were now filled with less 
ambivalence, less feelings of obligation and resentment, and thus more meaningful. The daughter 
also resumed communication with other people in and outside the hospital walls and made a few 
new acquaintances before her mother's death, which came peacefully a few days later. 
 
Mr. Y. was another man we will always remember, for he presented to us the agony, despair, and 
loneliness of the old man who is in the process of losing his wife after many decades of happy 
marriage. 
 
Mr. Y. was an old, somewhat haggard, "weather-proof" farmer who had never set foot in a big city. 
He had plowed his land, delivered many calves, and raised children who were all living in different 
corners of the country. He and his wife had been alone for the past many years and had, as he said, 
"grown 
 
(P146) 
 
accustomed to each other." Neither one could ever imagine living without the other. 
 
In the fall of 1967 his wife became seriously ill and the doctor advised the old man to seek help in 
the big city. Mr. Y. struggled for a while, but as his wife grew weaker and thinner, he took her to 
the "big hospital," where she was taken to the intensive treatment unit. Whoever has seen such a 
unit will appreciate the difference of life there compared to an improvised sickroom in a farmhouse. 
Every bed is occupied by critically ill patients, from newborn babies to old dying men. Every bed is 
surrounded by the most modern equipment this farmer had ever seen. Bottles hang from poles on 
the bedside, suction machines are going, a monitor ticks away, and staff members are forever busy 
keeping the equipment going and watching for critical signals. There is a lot of noisy business, an 
air of urgency and critical decisions, people coming and going, and no room for an old farmer who 
has never seen a big city. 
 
Mr. Y. insisted on being with his wife, but he was firmly told that he was allowed to see her only 
five minutes every hour. And so he stood there for five minutes every hour, just looking at her 
white face, trying to hold her hand, mumbling a few desperate words-to be told firmly and 
consistently to "please leave, your time is up." 
 
Mr. Y. was spotted by one of our students, who felt that he looked awfully desperate as he walked 
up and down the hallway, a lost soul in a big hospital. He brought him to our seminar where he 

---

shared some of his agony, being relieved to have someone to talk to. He had rented a room at the 
International House, a house mainly filled with students, many of them just returning for the new 
quarter. He was told that he had to leave soon to make room for the arriving students. The place 
was not far away from the hospital, but the old man walked the distance dozens of times. There was 
no place for him, no human being to talk to, not even the assurance of a room available in case his 
wife lived longer than a few days. Then there was the nagging awareness that he might actually 
lose her, that he might have to return without her. 
 
As we listened to him, he became increasingly angry at the hospital-angry at the nurses for being so 
cruel as to allow him only five minutes every hour. He felt that he was in their way even during 
those all too brief moments. Was that the way he was to say good-bye to his wife of almost fifty 
years? How do you explain to an old man that an intensive treatment unit is 
 
run this way, that there are administrative rules and laws that regulate visiting hours and that too 
many visitors in such a unit would be intolerable-if not for the patients, maybe for the sensitive 
equipment? It would certainly not have helped him to say, "Well, you loved your wife and you 
lived on the farm for so many years, why could you not let her die there?" He would have answered 
perhaps that he and his wife were one, like a tree and its roots, and one could not live without the 
other. The big hospital bore the promise of extending her life and he, the old man from the farm, 
was willing to venture into such a place for the glimpse of hope that it had offered. 
 
There was little we could do for him except help him find more secure living quarters within his 
financial means, to inform his sons of his loneliness and the need for their presence. We also talked 
to the nursing staff. We did not succeed in getting longer visiting rights but did at least in making 
him feel more welcome during the short periods he was allowed to stay with his wife. 
 
Needless to say, such incidents happen every day in every big hospital. Arrangements should be 
made increasingly to facilitate accommodations for members of the family of patients in such 
treatment units. There should be adjacent rooms where relatives can sit, rest, and eat, where they 
could share their loneliness and perhaps console each other during the endless periods of waiting. 
Social workers or chaplains should be available to relatives, with sufficient time for each one of 
them, and physicians and nurses should be frequent visitors in such rooms in order to be available 
for questions and concerns. As things stand now, the relatives are often left completely alone. They 
spend their hours waiting in hallways, cafeterias, or around the hospital, walking aimlessly back 
and forth. They may make some meager attempts to see the physician or talk to a nurse, often to b e 
told that the doctor is busy in the operating room or somewhere else. Since there is an increasing 
number of staff responsible for the welfare of each patient, no one knows the patient very well nor 
does the patient know the name of his doctor. It happens frequently that the relatives are sent from 
one person to the other and finally end up in the chaplain's office, not expecting many answers in 
regard to the patient but hoping to find some solace and understanding for their own agony. 
 
(P148) 
 
Some relatives would be of greater service to the patient and the staff if they would visit less often 
and less long. I am reminded of a mother who would not allow anybody to care for her twenty-two-
year-old son whom she treated like a baby. Though the young man was quite capable of taking care 
of his own needs, she washed him, insisted on brushing his teeth, and even cleaned him after a 

---