I have a dear friend who "has a friend" who is dying of cancer. My friend is going to start reading to him but the dying man is an atheist, but he respects science. So I was looking up some quotes for him from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and found these. They are so beautiful, I wanted to post them here - her quotes after a lifetime of studying death and dying.
Some of the books available by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. More can be found on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/.../147677.../ref=la_B000AP9LK0_1_1...
On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss
Jackie Robertshttp://www.amazon.com/.../15917.../ref=la_B000AP9LK0_1_10...
Is There Life after Death?
http://www.amazon.com/.../068483.../ref=la_B000AP9LK0_1_8...
Questions and Answers on Death and Dying
Quotes by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
"After your death, when most of you for the first time realize what life here is all about, you will begin to see that your life here is almost nothing but the sum total of every choice you have made during every moment of your life. Your thoughts, which you are responsible for, are as real as your deeds. You will begin to realize that every word and every deed affects your life and has also touched thousands of lives.
Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow.
Dying is an integral part of life, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society. Perhaps it is that in spite of all our technological advances. We may be able to delay it, but we cannot escape it.
Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you have lived.
For those who seek to understand it, death is a highly creative force. The highest spiritual values of life can originate from the thought and study of death.
I didn't fully realize it at the time, but the goal of my life was profoundly molded by this experience - to help produce, in the next generation, more Mother Teresas and less Hitlers.
It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.
It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on Earth -- and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.
I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.
Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose.
Live, so you do not have to look back and say: "God, how I have wasted my life."
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their canyons.
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.
There is no joy without hardship. If not for death, would we appreciate life? If not for hate, would we know the ultimate goal is love? At these moments you can either hold on to negativity and look for blame, or you can choose to heal and keep on loving.
There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.
Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.
We run after values that, at death, become zero. At the end of your life, nobody asks you how many degrees you have, or how many mansions you built, or how many Rolls Royces you could afford. That's what dying patients teach you.
When we have passed the tests we are sent to Earth to learn, we are allowed to graduate. We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our souls
You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.
Instead, the goal of life becomes not to elude death but, because one's fears do not center so much on it, rather to live in concert with it. After an NDE, the survivor finds a new lease on life; she/he is more willing to try new things and to fit as many things as possible into it because she/he is no longer so afraid of what will happen at death. After the NDE, life is more cherished, and the relationships that gave that life more meaning are emphasized upon. The NDE encourages growth and exploration; its acknowledgment helps for those in a society to desire continued testing of the limits and possibilities of life." - Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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Amazon.com says the following: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross earned a place as the best-loved and most-respected authority on the subjects of death and dying. Through her many books, as well as her years working with terminally ill children, AIDS patients, and the elderly, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross brought comfort and understanding to millions coping with their own deaths or the death of a loved one. Dr. Kubler-Ross, whose books have been translated into twenty-seven languages, passed away in 2004 at the age of seventy-eight. Before her death, she and David Kessler completed work on their second collaboration, On Grief and Grieving.
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