DEATH
OBJECTIVE: To discuss and understand the role death has in our lives,
in shaping our beliefs and daily actions.
CASE STUDIES:
Ancient Mysteries - Death Rites (video)
Poems and Paintings:
Personification of Death
Fear of Death or Hell
Anticipation of Death
Fighting Death
Grief
Reality of Death
Memorials of the Dead
Memorial Services
Death and the Grave
Celebrations of Death
Beyond the Grave
Morrie Swartz, Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie
Guest Speaker - Mortician--Russon Brothers
A bark painting from
northeastern Arnhem
Land, shows a funerary rite for 3 people,
who are depicted
lying in their graves.
The circles represent
the water holes from
which the spirits of
children emerge, and
to which the spirits
of the dead return
in boats which are
represented by the
shape of the graves.
The man in the upper right beats a pair
of clapsticks which
accompany the
ceremonial rights.
Other mourners
carry baskets on
their heads
A painted wooden spirit mask by
a Dan craftsman of Liberia. The
characteristic slitted eyes are said
to restrict the power emanating
from the world of the dead spirits.
The Kongo people of western Zaire say the universe has to regions,
separated by an ocean. The upper region, the world of the living, is like
a mountain. The underworld, the world of the dead, is similar, but faces
downwards. Each world has villages, waters and hills. Heaven is white,
but the earth below is black, on account of evil and disobedience, to the
High God’s will. Between heaven and earth is the rainbow, represented
as red. Beneath the black earth is the water barrier, the origin of all life,
which is also red, and beneath the is the underworld, which is white. Like
the universe, the alternation of night and day and the stages of human life
are red, white and black. The red dawn is like birth, the white noonday
sun is maturity and justice, and sunset heralds the blackness of death. The
wood and raffia mask of Zaire’s Pende people my represent the sun, and
opposites such as day and night.
SUGGESTED READINGS:
The Deeper Wound by Deepak Chopra
Bodies in Motion and at Rest by Thomas Lynch
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
A Seperate Peace by
DEATH NOTESHEET
GUEST SPEAKER NOTES
Who do you call when someone dies?
What types of services are available?
What happens to the body after death, (embalming, cremation)?
How much does a funeral cost?
Coffins? What types of coffins are available?
Plots?
Services?
WHO WOULD YOU WANT NOTIFIED OF YOUR DEATH?
(You may want to make available a way for someone to contact those you want notified; adresses, phone #’s)
DO YOU HAVE A WRITTEN RECORD OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
Insurance coverage? Debt?
Credit cards?
Living will?
Names, adresses and location of the information?
WHAT DO YOU WANT AT YOUR OWN FUNERAL SERVICES?
Would it be humorous or serious? What would be one funny thing you would want at your funeral?
HOW WILL YOU LIVE YOU LIFE AFTER THINKING ABOUT DEATH?
HOW DO YOU WANT THOSE WHO LOVE YOU TO LIVE THEIR LIVES AFTER YOU ARE
GONE?
HOW DO YOU WANT TO BE REMEMBERED?
WRITE DOWN SOME THOUGHTS FOR THOSE YOU LOVE AND WHO LOVE YOU.
What do you want them to know? What is the tone of your letter? Is it loving or spiteful? What would be
the best tone for your letter?
poems and funerals—they are all the same. The arrangement of flowers and homages, casseroles and sympathies; the arrangement of images and idioms, words on a page—it is all the same—an effort at meaning
and metaphor, an exercise in symbol and ritualized speech, the heightened acoustics of language raised
against what is reckoned unspeakable—faith and heartbreak, desire and pain, love and grief, the joyous
and sorrowful mysteries by which we keep track of our lives and times….Good poems and good funerals
are stories well told.
Thomas Lynch
from Bodies in Motion and at Rest
PERSONIFICATION OF DEATH
WHEN DEATH COMES
by Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom. Taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
J. Colin Plancy
suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.
young death sits in a café
smiling,a piece of money held between
his thumb and first finger
i say “will he buy flowers” to you
and “Death is young
life wears velour trousers
life totters,life has a beard” i
say to you who are silent.—”Do you see
Life? He is there and here,
or that,or this
or nothing or an old man 3 thirds
asleep,on his head
flowers,always crying
to nobody something about les
roses les bluets
yes,
will He buy?
Les bells bottes—oh hear
,pas cheres”)
and my love slowly answered I think so. But
I think I see some else
there is a lady, whose name is Afterwards
she is sitting beside y oung death, is slender;
likes flowers.
e.e. cummings
From THE HAT LADY
In a childhood of hats-my uncles in hombergs and derbies,
Fred Astaire in high black silk,
the yarmulke my gradfather wore
like the palm of a hand
cradling the back of his head-only my father went hatless,
even in winter.
And in the spring,
when a turban of leaves appeared
on every tree, the Hat Lady came
with a fan of pins in her mouth
and pins in her sleeves,
the Hat Lady came-that Saint Sebastian of pins,
to measure my mother’s head
FEAR OF DEATH OR HELL
by James Ensor
I remember a hat of dove greay felt
that settled like a bird
on the nest of my mother’s hair.
I remember a pillbox that tilted
over one ey--pure Myrna Loy,
and a navy straw with cherries caught
at the brim that seemed real enough
for a child to have to pick.
Linda Pastan
My Number
Is Death miles away from this house
reaching for a widow in Cincinnati
or breathing down the neck of a lost hiker
in British Columbia?
Is he too busy making arrangements,
tampering with air brakes,
scattering cancer cells like seeds,
loosening the wooden beams of roller coasters
to bother with my hidden cottage
that visitors find so hard to find?
Deepak Chopra
Dying is horrifying to us on many levels. It is a fearful prospect to suffer
intense physical pain, and since we have all felt it, our minds recoil from
experiencing more. The prospect of being annihilated, of disappearing into
the void as experience comes to an end. Creates perhaps the deepest
fear. In response, people try to escape awareness of mortality in all ways
we’ve become familiar with, from substance abuse to our culture’s endless
fascination with youth and beauty.
Last year when the chemicals
took my mother’s hair, she wrapped
a towel around her head. And the Hat Lady came,
a bracelet of needles on each arm,
and led her to a place
where my father and grandfather waited,
DRUM
head to bare head, and Death
By Langston Hughes
winked at her and tipped his cap.
Dying is a natural process, but our
attitudes toward it can be very unnatural. The fear of Death witnessed here
is rooted in deep emotional clinging.
Whatever you resist you will fear.
Bear in mind
That death is a drum
Beating forever
Till the last worms come
To answer its call,
Till the last stars fall,
Until the last atom
Is no atom at all,
Until time is lost
And there is no air
And space itself
Is nothing nowhere,
Death is a drum,
A signal drum,
Calling life
To come!
Come!
Deepak Chopra
From The Deeper Wound
by Kathe Kollwitz
Journey’s End
Did you have any trouble with the directions?
I will ask, as I start talking my way out of this.
How hard we try to reach death safely,
luggage intact, each child accounted for,
the wound of passage quickly bandaged up.
We treat the years like stops along the way
of a long flight from the catastrophe
we move to, thinking: home free at last.
Wave, wave your hanky towards journey’s end;
avert you eyes from windows grimed with twilight
where landscape rush by, terrible and lovely.
Or is he stepping from a black car
parked at the dark end of the lane,
shaking open the familiar cloak,
its hood raised like the head of a crow
and removing the scythe from the trunk?
Billy Collins
Come!
Linda Pastan
ANTICIPATION OF DEATH
We Die
for Carl Sagan
I
We die despite appointments and feuds,
while our toddler,
who recently learned to say No,
opens and shuts drawers
a hundred times a day
and our teen braces
for the rapids of romance.
The Death of a Parent
Move to the front
of the line
a voice says, and suddenly
there is nobody
left standing between you
and the world, to take
the first blows
on their shoulders.
This is the place in books
where part one ends, and
part two begins,
and there is no part three.
The slate is wiped
not clean but like a canvas
painted over in white
so that a whole new landscape
must be started,
bits of the old
still showing underneath-those colors sadness lends
to a certain hour of evening.
Now the line of light
at the horizon
is the hinge between earth
and heaven, only visible
a few moments
as the sun drops
its rusted padlock
into place.
We die despite the contracts
and business trips we planned,
when our desk is untidy,
despite a long list of things to do
which we keep simmering
like a pot of rich broth.
We die despite work we cherish,
marrying whom we love,
piling up a star-spangle fortune,
basking on the Riviera of fame,
and achieving, that human participle
with no known object.
II
Life is not fair, the old saw goes.
We know, we know but the saw glides slow,
one faint rasp, and then at length another.
When you died, I felt its jagged teeth rip.
Small heartwounds opened and bled,
closing as new ones opened ahead.
Horror welled, not from the how but the when.
by Martinelli
You died at the top of your career,
happy, blessed by love, still young.
Playing by evolution’s rules, you won:
prospered, bred, rose in your tribe,
did what the parent gods and society prized.
Yet it didn’t save you, love or dough.
Even when it happens slow, it happens fast,
and then there’s no tomorrow.
Time topples, the castle of cards collapses,
thoughts melt, the subscriptions lapses.
What a waste of life we spend in asking,
in wish and worry and want and sorrow.
A tall man, you lie low, now and forever
complete, your brilliant star eclipsed.
I remember our meeting, many gabfests ago,
at a crossroads of moment and mind.
In later years, touched by nostalgia,
I teased: “I knew you when you when
you were just a badly combed scientist.”
With a grin, you added: I knew you when
you were just a fledgling poet.”
Lost friend, you taught me lessons
I longed to learn, and this final one I’ve learned
against my will: the one spoken in silence,
warning us to love hard and deep,
clutch dear ones tighter, ransom each day,
the horror lesson I saw out of the corner of my eye
but refused to believe until now: we die.
Diane Ackerman
Linda Pastan
by J. W. Waterhouse
The Dead
The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats
of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.
Billy Collins
For Justine, whom I never knew.
How do I draw this face I see?
Identify its parts, its personality.
It appears human.
Is the curve of the eye strong or soft?
Is the jaw line harsh and biting or soft and
As is the world this face sees.
kissable
Draw a line Make a decision
a gesture or hint of what is to come.
Rembrandt did it in an instant,
his thoughts and hands were one.
Once the decision is made
react to it.
How will a second line interact with the first?
How will the first decision influence the second?
And on and on,
like dominoes our decisions fall
in circles around our feet.
The first timid line may seem insignificant, small , unimportant,
unsure,
but
its presence and perspective will perpetuate
the proportions we see ourselves with.
That first decision can be the hardest one.
Make your mark.
The intimidation of the blank page;
the pressure of our predecessors.
Make your mark.
It is ours to make, you know.
Own it.
The curve of the eye is seeking
your decision.
FIGHTING DEATH
Orpheus and Eurydice – A story about refusing to
accept death. Orpheus fell in love with a beautiful nymph and when she died he went to hell to
retrieve her. He was told not to look back. He did.
She was following him, but fell back to her fate.
The moral - that we cannot cheat death.
Orpheus by Linda Pastan
When Orpheus turned
and looked back and knew
that genius wasn’t enough,
I wonder which he regretted most:
the failure of will,
Eurydice lost,
or what it must mean for her
to remain
a fraction of darkness?
But
The emptiness of the clean slate is
almost comforting.
I could sink into the white softness of its two-dimensional plane.
Its nothingness is an identity
for those who want none.
These rambling thoughts go
nowhere
like a wandering line
that touches my heart
as you did
the moment you made the decision to
stop drawing.
S. Marx
5.1.2000
The Death of Marat by J.L. David
by Jean Raoux
The Five Stages of Grief
GRIEF OF DEATH
The night I lost you
someone pointed me towards
the Five Stages of Grief.
Go that way, they said,
it’s easy, like learning to climb
stairs after the amputation.
And so I climbed.
Denial was first.
I sat down at breakfast
carefully setting the table
for two. I passed you the toast-you sat there. I passed
you the paper--you hid
behind it.
Anger seemed more familiar.
I burned the toast, snatched
the paper and read the headlines myself.
But they mentioned your departure,
and so I moved on to
Bargaining. What could I exchange
for you? The silence
after storms? My typing fingers?
Before I could decide, Depression
came puffing up, a poor relation
its suitcase tied together
with string. In the suitcase
were bandages for the eyes
and bottles of sleep. I slid
all the way down the stairs
feeling nothing.
And all the time Hope
flashed on and off
in defective neon.
Hope was my uncle’s middle name,
he died of it.
After a year I am still climbing,
though my feet slip
on your stone face.
The treeline
has long since disappeared;
green is a color
I have forgotten.
But now I see what I am climbing
towards; Acceptance,
written in capital letters,
a special headline:
Acceptance,
its name is in lights.
I struggle on,
waving and shouting.
Below, my whole life spreads its surf,
all the landscapes I’ve ever known
or dreamed of. Below
a fish jumps: the pulse
in your neck.
Acceptance. I finally reach it.
But something is wrong.
Grief is a circular staircase.
I have lost you.
Linda Pastan
October Funeral
for Ag
The world is shedding
its thousand skins.
The snake goes naked,
and the needles of the pine fall out
like the teeth of a comb I broke
upon your hair last week.
The ghosts of dead leaves
haunt no one. Impossible
to give you to the weather,
to leave you locked in a killed tree.
No metaphysic has prepared us
for the simple act of turning
and walking away.
Linda Pastan
by Kathe Kollwitz
MEMORIALS OF DEATH
In almost every culture those who mourn the
departed hold onto them through memory.
WWII Memorial, Washington D.C.
MEMORIAL SERVICES
We confront the inevitable with rituals that comfort us by defining the boundaries between life and
Rituals help us vent grief, say farewell, and start life’s routines again.
Rituals of death are not just for the living they also aide the dead through a voyage toa new
place, while assuring the living that death doesn’t really kill.
His fingers were stiff, and it took him a long time to twist the lid off the holy water. Drops of water fell on the red
blanket and soaked into dark icy spots. He sprinkled the grave and the water disappeared almost before it touched
the dim, cold sand; it reminded him of something – he tried to remember what it was, because he thought if he could
remember he might understand this. He sprinkled more water; he shook the container until it was empty, and the
water fell through the light from sundown like August rain that fell while the sun was still shining, almost evaporating
before it touched the wilted squash flowers.
Leslie Marmon Silko
from The Man to Send Rain Clouds
ELEGY by Linda Pastan
Last night the moon lifted itself
on one wing
over the fields
and struggling to rise
this morning
like a hooked fish
through watery
layers
of sleep,
I know
with what difficulty
Ffowers
by Albien Egger-lienz
DEATH AND THE GRAVE
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS by John Donne
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
must pull themselves
all the way up
their stems.
How much easier
the free fall of snow
or leaves in their season.
All week, watching
the hospital gown
rising
and falling
with your raggedy breath,
I dreamed
not of resurrections
but of the slow, sensual
slide each night
into sleep, of dust
or newly shovelled earth
settling.
I Praise My Destroyer
CELEBRATIONS OF DEATH
written by Laura Nero
How can it all end,
the mood making foil of the blueblack sea,
at twilight the sandbars holding lavender
among turquoise shadows,
pastels of water lidded by pastels of sky
and, at angle, moon shimmer snaking to the horizon?
By the dockside, a diver kneels at his tank
to test the regulator, as if taking communion.
I’m not scared of dying
and I don’t really care
if it’s peace you find in dying,
well then, let the time be near
If it’s peace you find in dying,
well then dying time is near
just bundle up my coffin,
’cause it’s
cold way down there,
I hear that it’s
cold way down there, yeah
crazy cold, way down there
How can it all end,
the soccer field in September
where an amphitheater crowd chants
Cosmos! Cosmos! as if to all Creation
and, at the goal mouth, the lyric sway
of the keeper repeats like a mantra
over the lips of the net?
And when I die, and when I’m gone
there’ll be, one child born
in this world
to carry on, to carry on
....
How can it all end,
the cabbage whites aflutter
like tissue-paper prayers
lofting to Heaven in a Japanese temple,
the yellow roses numbingly fragrant
and even the spiky conifer
whispering scent?
I praise my destroyer.
Burial of the Sardine
The sea turtle’s revenge
is to dwell at equal measures
from the grave. Our cavernous brains
won’t save us in the end,
though, heaven know, they enhance the drama.
Despite passion’s rule, deep play
and wonder, worry hangs
like a curtain of trembling beads
across every doorway.
by Francisco Goya
But there was never a dull torment,
and it was grace to live
among the fruits of summer, to love by design,
and walk the startling Earth
for what seemed
an endless resurrection of days.
I praise life’s bright catastrophes,
and all the ceremonies of grief.
I praise our real estate--a shadow and a grave.
I praise my destroyer,
and will continue praising
until hours run like mercury
through my fingers, hope flares a final time
in the last throes of innocence,
and all the coins of sense are spent.
Diane Ackerman
When I die by Blood, Sweat and Tears
New Orleans Jazz Funeral
Now troubles are many
there as
deep as a well
I can swear there ain’t no Heaven
but I pray there ain’t no hell
Swear there ain’t no Heaven
and I’ll pray there ain’t no hell
but I’ll never know by livin’
only my dyin’ will tell, yes only my
dyin’ will tell, oh yeah,
Only my dyin’ will tell
And when I die, and when I’m gone
there’ll be, one child born, in this world
to carry on, to carry on
yeah yeah
Give me my freedom
for as long as I be
All I ask of livin’
is to have no chains on me
All I ask of livin’
is to have no chains on me
And all I ask of dyin’ is to
go natrually, only wanna
go naturally
Here I go!
hey hey
Here come the devil
right behind
look out children, here he come
here he come, heyyy
Don’t wanna go by the devil
don’t wanna go by the demon
don’t wanna go by satan
don’t wann die uneasy
just let me go
naturally
And when I die, and when I’m dead
dead and gone
there’ll be
one child born, in our world
to carry on, to carry on
BEYOND THE GRAVE
It gives comfort to read in the Upanishads that our lives are like ripples in the vast ocean of consciousness; like
waves we rise and fall, yet we never disappear, for the ocean is infinite and eternal, and a wave is nothing but that
ocean. It is equally comforting to read the scientific equivalent of the same statement, which holds that everything
in existence is a wave of energy, and even though the wave function may collapse to form an electron whose life is
infinite, eternal, unmoving, and undying.
Deepak Chopra
from The Deeper Wound
Death as a fact becomes less brutal if you can accept that it is a necessary part of life. The universe recycles everything in the never-ending flow of time. The atoms that make up your body have found a temporary shelter only.
Like birds of passage they are always in flight. With your next breath you will take in several billion molecules of air
once breathed by Buddha or Jesus, and when you exhale you will send molecules of air to be breathed tomorrow by
people in China. Every atom of your body is borrowed and must be repaid to the cosmos. The reason that the ancient Indians worshiped Shiva, the god of death and dissolution, wasn’t out of fear alone, or a desire to placate him.
The traditions of wisdom looked at nature and say in its design creation and dissolution, the one inseparable from
the other. At the deepest level, everyone is borrowing and repaying all the time. The scene isn’t one of perpetual
death but of life circulating within itself.
Deepak Chopra
from The Deeper Wound
Imagine that inside you is a space nothing can
touch. Your body is like a house that gives shape
to this space of peace an d silence. When a house
falls down, when its roof and walls collapse, no
harm is done to that space inside. Only the boundaries have disappeared. In death we lose our bodily
definition, but the space of inner peace, which
some call the soul, is never harmed.
Deepak Chopra
Buddhist practice greatly emphasizes importance of the
awareness of death and impermanence.... Sometimes
when I think about death I have a feeling of curiosity and
this makes it much easier for me to accept death.
His Holiness the Dali Lama
Tibetan Wheel of Life
“Everyone knows they’re going to die,” he said again “but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do
things differently.”
So we kid ourselves about death, I said.
“Yes. But there is a better approach. To know you are going to die, and be prepared for it at any given
time. That’s better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living.”
But everyone knows someone how has died, I said. Why is it so hard to think about dying?
“Because, Morrie continued, “most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”
And facing death changes all that?
“Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials.
From Tuesday’s with Morrie Pages 81-2
by Mitch Albom
What if you had one day perfectly healthy, I asked? What would you do?
“Twenty-four hours”
“Let’s see...I’d get up in the morning, do my exercises, have a lovely breakfast of sweet rolls and tea, go for a
swim, than have my friends
come over for a nice lunch. I’d have them come over one or two at a time so we could talk about their families, their issues, talk about how much we mean to each other.
“then I’d like to go for a walk, in a garden with some trees, watch their colors, what the birds, take in the nature I
haven’t seen in so long now.
“In the evening, we’d all go together to a restaurant with some great pasta, maybe some duck - I love duck - and
then we’d dance the rest of the night. I’d dance with all the wonderful dance partners out there, until I was exhausted. And
then I’d go home an have a deep, wonderful sleep.”
That’s it?
“That’s it.”
It was so simple. So average. I was actually a little disappointed. I figured he’d fly to Italy or have lunch with the
President or romp on the seashore or try every exotic thing he could think of. After all these months, lying there, unable to
move a leg or foot--how could he find perfection in such an average day?
Then I realized this was the whole point.
From Tuesday’s with Morrie Pages 175-6
by Mitch Albom
by Hernomous Bosch
What
Obituaries
What starts things
These are no pages for the young,
who are better off in one another’s arms,
are the accidents behind the eyes
touched off by, say, the missing cheekbone
of a woman who might have been beautiful
nor for those who just need to know about the price of gold,
or a hurricane that is ripping up the Keys.
it is thinking about
your transplanted life-line going places
in someone else’s palm, or the suicidal games
your mind plays with the edge
of old wounds, or something
you couldn’t share with your lover
there are no endings
people die between birthdays and go on for years;
what stops things for a moment
are the words you’ve found for the last bit of light
you think there is
Stephen Dunn
Here is where the final cards are shown,
the age, the cause, the plaque of deeds,
and sometimes an odd scrap of news—
that she collected sugar bowls,
that he played solitaire without any clothes.
And all the survivors huddle at the end
under the roof of a paragraph
as if they had sidestepped the flame of death.
What better way to place a thin black frame
around the things of the morning—
the hand-painted cup,
the hemispheres of a cut orange,
the slant of sunlight on the table?
And sometimes a most peculiar pair turns up,
strange roommates lying there
side by side upon the page—
Arthur Godfrey next to Man Ray,
Ken Kesey by the side of Dale Evans.
The Wires of the Night
I thought about his death for so many hours,
tangled there in the wires of the night,
that it came to have a body and dimensions,
more than a voice shaking over the telephone
or the black obituary boldface of name and dates.
His death now had an enterance and an exit,
doors and stairs,
windows and shutters which are the montionless wings
of windows. His death had a head and clothes,
the white shirt and baggy tousers of death.
His death had pages, a dark leather cover, an index,
and the print was too minuscule for anyone to read.
His death had hinges and bolts that were oiled
and locked,
had a loud motor, four tires, and antenna that listened
to the wind, and a mirror in which you could see the past.
His death had sockets and keys, it had walls and beams.
It had a handle which you could not hold and a floor
you could not lie down on in the middle of the night.
In the freakish pink and gray of dawn I took
his death to bed with me and his death was my bed
and in every corner of the room it hid the light,
and then it was the light of day and the next day
and all the days to follow, and it moved into the future
like the sharp tip of a pen moving across an empty page.
But eventually you may join
the crowd who turn here first to see
who has fallen in the night,
who has left a shape of air walking in their place.
Billy Collins
It is enough to bring to mind an ark of death,
not the couples of the animal kingdom,
but rather pairs of men and women
ascending the gangplank two by two,
surgeon and model,
balloonist and metal worker,
an archaeologist and an authority on pain.
Arm in arm, they get on board
then join the others leaning on the rails,
all saved at last from the awful flood of life—
so many of them every day
there would have to be many arks,
an armada to ferry the dead
over the heavy waters that roll beyond the world,
and many Noahs too,
bearded and fiercely browed, vigilant up there at every prow.
Billy Collins
Depending on individual needs, a person may stay in one stage for a long time, move back and forth from one stage to
another, or move through each stage in the order listed below:
DENIAL:
This may be expressed by feeling nothing or insisting there has been no change. It is an important stage and gives people a
“time out” to reorganize. People in this stage need understanding and time.
ANGER:
Often, after denying a situation, people turn around and react. This reacting can be defined as anger. It can be expressed in
nightmares and fears and in disruptive behavior. People in this stage need opportunities to express anger in a positive and
healthy way.
BARGAINING:
The purpose of bargaining is to regain a loss. Consequently, a promise is made to do something in order to get something
in return.
Bargaining may be expressed through threats, tantrums, or demands. It can also be expressed in angelic behavior or perfectionist tendencies.
DEPRESSION:
This sets in when it is realized that anger and bargaining will not work and one begins to understand that a change may be
permanent. This is a stage of grieving for whomever or whatever is lost.
People in this stage need to know that others understand and are concerned about their feelings.
ACCEPTANCE:
Acknowledgement of a death - a period of calm after release of emotions, demonstrated by a lifting of sadness and a willingness to keep living.
HOPE:
Evidenced by a revitalization of energy, a renewed interest in old friends, the development of new friendships, and the
return of a sense of humor.
*Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
DEATH IS
NOT BEING able to watch Tigger and Roo for the eighth time in
ONE DAY. Possibly
EVERYDAY according to my slowly aging father:
DR. DEATH is what we call him,
KNOCKING AT random; on
EMPTY DOORS answered by the neighbors taking care of the cat who
ran out to meet the headlights of a car
NOW RESTing among the leaves and trash in the
BUTTERFLY’s graveyard.
IMAGINE being killed by
A gust of wind, like the
BREATH that gets knocked out of you
EVERYDAY when Dr. Death knocks on an answered door.
S. Marx
6.19.2001
NAME ______________________________________________
The upcoming unit on death is sometimes sensitive, especially for those who have recently experienced a death of someone close to them. If
there is anything of which you would like me to be aware, make some comments below. I won’t know if you don’t tell me and sometimes it can
help me to be sure and be sensitive to certain subjects. Also let me know if you are comfortable listening to the mortician. I am always glad when
students choose to come to this unit. It is important and I hope it can help you in some way.
Please check one of the following statements:
_____ I am interested in hearing what the mortician has to say.
_____ I am uncomfortable hearing what the mortician has to say, but will listen because Mrs. Marx went to the effort to ask him to come.
_____ I am uncomfortable hearing what the mortician has to say and would like to make other arrangements.
comments:
comments:
_____ I am uncomfortable hearing what the mortician has to say and would like to make other arrangements.
_____ I am uncomfortable hearing what the mortician has to say, but will listen because Mrs. Marx went to the effort to ask him to come.
_____ I am interested in hearing what the mortician has to say.
Please check one of the following statements:
The upcoming unit on death is sometimes sensitive, especially for those who have recently experienced a death of someone close to them. If
there is anything of which you would like me to be aware, make some comments below. I won’t know if you don’t tell me and sometimes it can
help me to be sure and be sensitive to certain subjects. Also let me know if you are comfortable listening to the mortician. I am always glad when
students choose to come to this unit. It is important and I hope it can help you in some way.
NAME ______________________________________________