On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Current read: On Death & Dying - What the Dying Have To Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Families by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Dr.Elisabeth, a psychiatrist quoted the conversation she had with terminally ill patients and have a catagorized the grief into 5 stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance 

Death is the thing I fear the most therefore I picked this book from the shelf at Foyles.

This book has some contents similar to the "Life Before Death" exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in May 2008. Death has become a taboo in the modern world since we are prevented from experiencing death unlike in the past that the dying would die at home surrounded by family and children are included in the process of dying and grief. Today most of us die at hospitals in grief.

Contents that touched me from the exhibition back in May last year.

The first exhibition I saw somebody burst into tears in front of the black and white photo of a dead baby and I couldn't help it too.

The most moving exhibition I've ever been part of.

Simple but moving because the content of real life that most of us would not experience until the time comes, the moment of dying and the bravery of the journalist and the photographer

"Life Before Death"

Photographer: Walter Schels

Journalist: Beate Lakotta

"Some of them couldn't accept that their life was going to an end because they didn't really live before. That's what they expressed. They said oh now is the end? I just thought it would be going to start. I just want to start living now. My whole life was work and now I wanted to enjoy my retirement or I wanted to enjoy my partnership... my relationship to somebody. 

I wanted to spend more time with my children. And they were very surprised that death came so suddenly so unexpected and they were very frustrated and sad." - Beate Lakotta

"In truth, it's very modern taboo. In former times, people have been used to having contact with dying people and also to have their beloved ones at home when they die so everybody even small children have an experience how it looks like, how the last breath sounds, how somebody looks like when he's dead, how it feels to touch somebody who's dead. And we lost this contact with death and dying since death has been banned to hospitals." - Beate Lakotta

"I think if you just try to imagine how you would like to be treated when you're dead, I wouldn't like to be treated as just a corpse or dead body... umm just close the coffin as soon as possible. I would like people I love... would look at my last face." - Beate Lakotta

"What I think the most important thing is to be aware that life has an end. To live daily life. Don't expect late for anything else but today." - Walter Schels

"We asked, in the beginning, we would like to take a portrait now and we would like to stay with you, we would like to visit you until the end. And we would like to take a portrait when you're dead. For us it was very difficult to ask this question. We had always been afraid to ask this because you express I'm convinced that you will die. When you ask somebody we would like to take a portrait after when you're dead. You express I don't believe in a miracle. I believe you will die very soon. And this was a very difficult question." - Beate Lakotta

"I'm not going to waste what time is left for me feeling sorry for myself. After all, the whole of life is a journey. Let's wait and see what the final part has to offer." - Irmgard Schmidt

"I'll be 57 today. I never thought of myself growing old, but nor did I ever think I'd die when I was still young. But death strikes at any age. It came as a real shock. I had never contemplated death at all, only life. I'm surprised that I have come to terms with it fairly easily. Now I'm lying here waiting to die, but each day that I have I savour, experience life to the full. I never paid any attention to clouds before. Now I see everything from a totally different perspective: every cloud outside my window, every flower in the vase. Suddenly everything matters." - Wolfgang Kotzahn

"My whole life was nothing but work, work, work. Does it really have to happen now? Can't death wait? I'm just so frightened. I don't even know whether I'll be going to heaven or hell." - Gerda Strech, died 68

"To be able to have one more summer. To go to the sea with my husband one last time. Not to die now but rather to have until autumn." - Beate Taube

"I'm so sad that I won't be there to support my children. I wanted to be there for them forever. Now I tell them a hundred times a day how much I love them."

For years, Heinz Muller has kept a pair of shoes hidden away. They are the shoes his mother was wearing when she was taken to the hospital where she died. --- "Every year, just before Christmas I would take out the shoes and polish them. Only this year I didn't get round to it because I was feeling too weak, I feel as if she's expecting me." - Heinz Muller