Death: The Final Stage of Growth

In this much-andcipated autobiography, the woman who transformed the way we think about death and dying reveals her ultimate beliefs about the purpose of life and the meaning of death — truths she has discovered as her own life draws to a close.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's final testimony is as powerful and inspiring as her classic On Death and Dying. In The Wheel of Life, she chronicles the events that have shaped her intellectually and spiritually, from her work as a doctor in war-ravaged Poland to her years of counseling the terminally ill and their families, to the series of strokes that have sharpened her insights into the nature of our final passage.

Writing with her usual candor, Kubler-Ross describes how the near-death experiences of the patients she has worked with convinced her that there is something beyond the death of the physical body, a belief affirmed in recent years by firsthand encounters with her own spirit guides. At once a story of Kubler-Ross's remarkable life and an extraordinary memoir of her spiritual evolution, The Wheel of Life teaches us to live life with courage, love, and hope.

"A wonderful testimony to the gentle beauty of her work". — The Topeka Metro Newso

Offers various viewpoints on death and dying, including those of ministers, rabbis, doctors, nurses, and sociologists, along with personal accounts of those near death.

Ours is a death-denying society. But death is inevitable, and we must face the question of how to deal with it. Coming to terms with our own finiteness helps us discover life's true meaning.

Why do we treat death as a taboo? What are the sources of our fears? How do we express our grief, and how do we accept the death of a person close to us? How can we prepare for our own death?

Drawing on our own and other cultures' views of death and dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross provides some illuminating answers to these and other questions. She offers a spectrum of viewpoints, including those of ministers, rabbis, doctors, nurses, and sociologists, and the personal accounts of those near death and of their survivors.

Once we come to terms with death as a part of human development, the author shows, death can provide us with a key to the meaning of human existence.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross M.D., is a psychiatrist and a world-renowned authority and counselor on death. Her works include On Death and Dying, AIDS, Questions and Answers on Death and Dying, and The Wheel of Life.

Preface: A journey into the realm of death and growth — Introduction — Why is it so hard to die?: The organizational context of dying / Hans O. Mauksch ; Death in the first person / Anonymous — Death through some other windows: Dying among Alaskan Indians : a matter of choice / Murray L. Trelease ; The Jewish view of death : guidelines for dying / Zachary I. Heller ; The Jewish view of death : guidelines for mourning / Audrey Gordon ; The death that ends death in Hinduism and Buddhism / J. Bruce Long --