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What does it mean to die well? This topic was discussed by Dr. William Stigall and Dr. Drew Stenesen in a meeting organized by the Hippocratic Society on Monday, Sept. 23. The conclusion drawn during the talk was that dying a good death involves dying with dignity, which includes contentment with one’s accomplishments in life and one’s faith in God.
The talk was based on an article written by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who identified the well-known five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. However, the Catholic Church has had its own version of the five stages of grief for hundreds of years, the “Ars moriendi,” or “ The art of dying.”
Stigall compared the five stages of grief with the five steps that led to Christ’s death on the cross. In the “Ars moriendi,” the Church outlines the steps taken by Christ in the hours leading up to His death on the cross: He prayed, wept, cried out, commended His Spirit and gave up His Spirit to the Father.
When Jesus commended His Spirit, He was indicating His readiness for death. He had done everything that He came to earth to do, except to die for the forgiveness of humanity’s sins. A good death often can be classified by this readiness because it shows the person dying is at peace with their life. He feels he has lived his life according to God’s call, and he can leave this world knowing that there is hope for a life in Heaven.
When lined up next to one another, Kübler-Ross’ and the Church’s approaches to death are very different. The five steps Christ followed begin with the acceptance of God’s will, whereas the five stages of grief end with acceptance but involve a lot of emotional turmoil beforehand.
I found this particularly interesting from a Catholic perspective, because when we look to the examples of the saints and the expectations for living a good Catholic life, acceptance of God’s will is the most important part. Obviously as humans we are imperfect, and so we are not all completely accepting God’s will at all times. However, that is our goal for life, to be aligned with God.
Something else discussed in the talk was the idea of death as taboo. Stigall asked whether death should be taboo, and Steneson added to the question, asking how early is too early to talk about death?
Should parents purposefully hide the realities of death from young children? Should doctors continue to give their patients hope of recovery, even when they know that there is very little or no hope of it?
Death is a hard thing to explain to a child. We often struggle to explain the deaths of pets to children because it leads to bigger questions. However, is it not worse for children to grow up without an understanding of the fragility of life? Yes, it is hard to explain death to children, but there are ways to do it that will not hurt them.
In some ways, Catholics already do this through the celebration of Easter. Teaching children about the gospels and the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ is the best way to introduce children to both the reality of death and the hope of a future in Heaven with Christ.
I do not think that death should be taboo in our society. People’s fear of talking about death has led to a culture that sweeps it under the rug and tries to pretend it is not a reality. This stops people from being prepared to die and leads to an overwhelming fear of death.
If society silences the reality of death, the result is five stages of grief which come from the inability to handle the reality that humans are not immortal and therefore must die at some point. This is the wrong way to go about it.
I agree with Stigall and Steneson that Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief are not the right way to deal with death, but just the way people have been observed dealing with it. When we keep death a taboo topic, we prevent people from processing the reality of death and being able to approach it in the same way that Jesus Christ did, with complete and total faith in God.
Aine O’Brien is a junior English major. She is a Blessed is She mentor.