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The old world is dying, and we are not about to grieve over it? Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ study of global grieving, if I
may call it that, started when she saw hope in dying in Maidanek, a concentration camp in Poland, where Adolf
Hitler had many children gassed to death. She was amazed that the children filled the camp walls with drawings
of butterflies (Daniel Redwood, 1995, healthy.net). Why would dying children think of butterflies? Butterflies are
free. The children had all accepted not death but the idea of dying, and still harbored in their hearts the hope to
live and/or be free again.
If the living cared for the dying
and gave them dignity, the living
would be free to live life in full
again. In Ms Elisabeth’s 1969
brainstorm On Death And
Dying, ‘she not only provided a
window into the minds of the
terminally ill; she offered a
psychological road map for the
end of life and the course of grief’
- that is to say, ‘she taught us
how to die’ (Marianne Szegedy-
Maszak, 29 August 2004,
usnews.com). Rather, I think Ms
Elisabeth taught the dying how
to die, and simultaneously
taught the living how to live.
What is called for is not simply Tuesdays With Morrie but all days. In nursing the dying, we are nursing the living.
In nursing dying soils, we are nursing Earth back to life.
Living Will? While I can, I will continue to write about dying soils brought back to life by the Survivor
Species called Sorgo, and I will expect to watch real butterflies fleeting about in the green fields, reminding
me always to be free, and that to learn about dying is to learn about living.
The Children Of Maidanek