On Death & Dying

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's "On death and dying" was inspired by her work with the terminally ill patients. In  the book Ross introduced the, now widely known, model about the emotional stages of dealing with grief.
The model later was expanded to include (explain) different types of loss, like the death of a loved one or the end of relationship and so forth.

The model has helped a lot of people deal with their "post loss" status. Yet this model could shed a different light on pre-loss stage in love relationships.

There is a point in a relationship when one realizes that it is never going to work out. It is the moment one realizes that their love is terminally ill. And as we do with terminal illness, we attempt at different medications on hope it will help.

We know it is terminal illness yet we never fail to seek whatever treatment that could buy us more time. We buy time on a hope that time will save us. We buy time, on a hope that a miracle is there waiting for us and all we have to do is keep holding on.

And as we realize that whatever treatment we try is never going to bring us to the miracle we start getting angry, at the world, at ourselves and sometimes at God himself for having us to go through this.

Why me?

Why should I watch my love die?

But anger doesn't help and so we move on to compromise and we start bargaining. Maybe we could redefine the relationship? Maybe he needs more space? Maybe if i kept ignoring the signs and kept acting as if the love isn't terminally ill it will never die.

Maybe .. Maybe there isn't a miracle waiting, but we should create our own miracles, aren't we?

And as we fail depression prevails.

And we start getting ready to let it go. We start contemplating how it should end. We plot plans to make it easy. But we know it is never going to be easy.

Depression Prevails, and acceptance brings on some interesting questions.

Would you sign a DNR on your dying love?

Would you rather put the relationship on life support?

Would you ever be ready to pull the plug on your "dead love"?

How could you let go?


There are five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. And it was never easy to go through them.