[Book Review] Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's 'On Death and Dying' — Listening to Others and Questioning Life in the Face of Death

Introduction

When did it become so difficult to talk about death?
The passing of a person was once an event that everyone witnessed in their daily lives.
Gathered in the home, family and neighbors would watch over the final breath by the light of a candle—
such scenes certainly existed as a shared memory of the community.

However, in the modern age, death has been pushed into invisible places.
As medical progress and institutionalization have advanced, death has been confined to the realm of specialists,
quietly disappearing from the conversations of people.
Discussing death is considered an omen of misfortune,
and the sight of someone dying is hidden behind curtains in the depths of a hospital.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's 'On Death and Dying' is a book that emerged as if to break that 'silence of death.'
Published in the United States in 1969,
this book confronted the 'denial of death' in end-of-life care head-on.
In the medical settings of that time, death was viewed as a doctor's defeat,
and it was considered best to continue treatment without even telling the patient the truth.

However, Ross felt a sense of discomfort with that silence.
She felt that by avoiding death, human dignity was actually being stripped away—
that was what she felt.
Death is a part of life for everyone,
and isn't talking about that process the very proof of living humanely?.
What she tried to convey throughout her life was not so much
an attitude of 'accepting death,' but rather 're-examining life through death'.

When we open this book late at night, we wonder:
Why do people fear death, and why have we lost the ability to talk about it?
Ross's book asks us quietly:
To talk about death is to listen to the pain of others.
And to listen to others is also to retell the story of one's own life—.
This book is also a work for gently restoring that cycle.

Chapter 1: The Psychiatrist Who Looked at Death — The Person Named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1926.
Spending her youth in an era of war, she witnessed the reality of death and violence.
The landscape of a war-torn Europe
deeply engraved in her heart the question of what it means to protect human dignity.

After World War II, Ross aspired to become a doctor and eventually moved to the United States.
However, what awaited her was a new world of medicine that pursued progress and efficiency.
Hospitals were organized as rational institutions,
and patients were managed as 'subjects of treatment.'
There, death was a failure to be avoided,
and neither doctors nor families would tell patients the reality of their death.

Ross felt a sense of discomfort in such a setting.
Dying patients were unable to tell anyone their thoughts.
While holding fear, anger, and small hopes in their hearts,
time simply passed in silence.
Wasn't that silence the deepest suffering of all?

From that thought, Ross went beyond her position as a doctor,
sitting by the patient's bedside and beginning the practice of simply listening to their stories.
Even if it was for a short time, she would accept unspoken thoughts,
and embrace words filled with anger and tears just as they were.
For her,'listening' was not diagnosis or persuasion, but the very act of 'being with' someone
.

From the accumulation of that experience, Ross eventually
organized the psychological process by which people come to accept death.
This is what later became globally known asthe 'five-stage model of acceptance of death'.
Her work went beyond the realm of medicine,
an attempt to portray death as a 'human experience.'

But for Ross, theory was not the goal.
What she saw
was the figure of a human being who, even on the verge of death, still thought of someone and tried to convey something.
Rather than analyzing death, she listened to the voices living there.
That attitude brought 'listening as ethics' to the medical field.

Chapter 2: The Meaning of the Five Stages — How is 'Dying' Experienced?

The 'five stages of acceptance of death' presented by Ross consist of
denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
However, it is not merely a psychological process.
It was also a 'map of a story' that depicted how a person lives their death.

The first,'denial', lies between fear and hope.
When receiving a sudden prognosis, a person rejects reality.
Behind the words 'It can't be me,'
lies the will to believe in a life that should still continue.
It is not a defense, but a form of final hope.

In the second,'anger', the absurdity of the world erupts.
Resistance against doctors, family, and fate itself.
But that anger is also a reversal of the power to live.
The reason one can be angry is that the feeling of 'wanting to live' still remains within oneself.

The third,'bargaining', symbolizes the thoughts that a person cannot let go of at the end.
'If only I had a little more time,' 'If I could see that person'—
thoughts like faith, wishes, and prayers rise up into words.
It is a small story that a person weaves themselves while facing death.

'Depression'is at the point where that story reaches its end.
The sadness for what is being lost, the quieting of the narrative.
Ross viewed this stage not as the 'end of life,' but as
'the maturity of deep silence.'
Tears are not proof of despair,
but something like a final prayer for the life one has lived until now.

And then,'acceptance'.
It is neither understanding nor resignation.
A quiet state of mind where one no longer resists and surrenders oneself to the flow.
There is no religious salvation there,
but a gentle light resides in which a human being affirms their own life through death.

These five stages are not a linear progression of time.
People move back and forth between denial and anger, and sink into grief again just before acceptance.
Ross accepted this as a natural human fluctuation.
In other words,the process of dying is not a 'stage for organizing emotions,' but
'a process for reaffirming life'.

What those facing death demonstrated was
the power of 'life' that continues even within death.
Ross, who recorded this,
left behind the philosophy of 'learning about life through death'as human wisdom that everyone can share.

Chapter 3: The Ethics of Listening to Silence — Witnessing the Death of Others

The core of Ross's practice lay in 'listening'.
She believed that the truth lies in the voices left unspoken in medical settings—
within the silence itself.

People facing death often lose their words.
Even when family visits, they may not even be able to open their eyes.
Ross did not see that silence as rejection, but
accepted it as a 'time for dialogue with death.'
Even after people stop speaking,
they remain connected to the world through their gaze, breathing, and slight gestures.
She saw in that the deepest form of life.

Listening to silence is not about comforting.
It is not about trying to take away the other person's pain, but
remaining by the side of that pain.
That attitude is more of a stance than an action, and
should be called an 'ethic' that transcends understanding or empathy.

Many who visited Ross
called the time they spent with her 'healing,'
not because she gave them something,
but because she took nothing away.
Simply being together in silence.
That way of being was the purest form of human relationship.

Witnessing death does not mean becoming a spokesperson for the dead.
It means holding the unspoken words
and the determination to keep living regardless.
Ross depicted death not as an 'end,' but
as the 'beginning of listening.'
Listening to the death of another is,
in the end, looking at one's own life once more.

Chapter 4: From Death to Life — The Human as a 'Process'

When Ross grasped death as a 'process,' she simultaneously changed the meaning of life.
Death is not the end point of life, but a part of life—a mirror-like event that reflects life back upon itself.
Following that process was also a time to 'put the meaning of one's life into words once again.'

Many who visited her began to talk about their lives in the face of death.
Daily events, loved ones, regrets, and wishes—all of these emerged as a single story as they neared the end.
Ross simply stayed by their side, ensuring that their narrative was not interrupted.
It was not encouragement, nor was it approval; it was a gaze that watched over the proof of existence that 'you were here.'

Words spoken at the moment of death are often simple and unadorned.
'I wish I had lived more honestly,' 'I wanted to tell you I love you'—such thoughts drift quietly in the air, transcending logic.
Ross received each one as the 'outline of life' that a human weaves at the very end.
Death is not the collapse of personality, but rather a process toward the completion of the self.

This perspective was later inherited by the hospice movement and the philosophy of grief care.
While medicine aims to prolong the body's life, Ross considered 'bringing the story of life to life' to be the essence of medicine.
It is not treatment, but something closer to healing.
Medicine that comforts the soul through conversation and listening, rather than through IVs and drugs.
This idea brought ethical warmth back to the medical field.

Ross saw humans not as fixed entities, but as beings in constant creation.
Death is merely one event in that continuity, not a rupture, but a passage.
Life and death are not two opposing terms, but two rhythms that melt into each other.
Every time a person faces death, they make the outline of the life they have here and now more vivid.
Ross believed that this process is the very proof of being human.

For her, 'acceptance' was an attitude closer to
seeing life through to the very end than to accepting death.
It is not fearing the end, but confirming the life that is still continuing through that end.
It is a quiet endeavor, like picking up a faint light visible at the moment of fading.

This perspective does not offer religious salvation.
What Ross was looking at was human sincerity rather than faith.
Learning about life through death—deep wisdom lies within that simple act.
Death is not an event of ending, but an opportunity to bring the meaning of life to the surface once more.
When standing before that mirror, people may finally begin to speak about 'what it means to live' in their own words.

Chapter 5: Questions for the Modern Age — 'Dialogue with Death' in a Lonely Era

In modern society, the 'denial of death' that Ross once identified has returned in a more sophisticated form.
Aging, the evolution of technology, and the specialization of medicine—these have distanced death from us.
Human death is separated from the home and community, recorded as just another piece of anonymous data.
Obituaries flow across social media screens, only to be buried by other topics a few hours later.
We may now be living surrounded by death, all while thinking we have kept it at a distance.

In Ross's time, there were still 'places to talk about death.'
Now, in our society, those spaces for conversation have thinned, and death sinks silently into a sea of information.
In medical settings, life-prolonging technology has advanced, delaying the moment of death indefinitely,
yet the question of 'what it means to be alive' is somehow left behind.

That is why Ross's words call us back once again.
The courage to accept the pain of others in silence.
That is the first step toward facing death.
When faced with someone's grief, we immediately want to say, 'I understand.'
But what is truly needed is not understanding, but 'listening.'
Listening is not an act of changing the other person or comforting them, but of accepting their existence in its entirety.
What flows at theroot of that is not empathy, but respect.

This act of 'listening' is also a question posed in our daily lives.
Conversations with family, farewells to friends, dialogues at work—how do we handle the small silences that lurk within them?
Ross's philosophy extends beyond end-of-life care, posing questions that permeate every corner of our existence.
The act of 'being present at death' is not the exclusive domain of a special profession, but rather
an endeavor open to all human beings who exist alongside others.

If you read this book as a late-night cultural companion, it emerges not merely as a medical text or a psychological study, but as a 'book of life'.
While it deals with death, there is a quiet warmth here.
It is not a gaze that seeks hope beyond despair, but one that affirms life while embracing its end.

The stance of looking straight at the time a person has lived, right up to the final moment.That gaze is at the core of Ross's philosophy
.

What Ross depicted was not a technique for how to die, but a stance on how to live.
No matter how much pain or fear there may be, people wish to think of others, to speak, and to be heard by someone until the very end
.As long as that wish exists, humans are not alone.
Her philosophy showed a path to reclaiming connection with others through death.

Death is not a distant event; it flows deep within our lives.
It constantly shapes us from unseen places, and today, it speaks quietly from the depths of someone's silence.
Ross's work was not about isolating death as a special event, but about re-examining the 'small endings and beginnings' within our daily lives.

The philosophy she left behind continues to live on amidst this modern loneliness.
A 'dialogue with death' is not about speaking to the dead, but about us, the living, sharing our silence.
In that quiet exchange, human hope breathes.

Conclusion: Speaking of Death, Listening to Life

Death is not a distant event.
It quietly nestles in the same place as our hope for tomorrow.
We live our days experiencing someone's farewell and gazing at someone's silence.
Yet, speaking of death still feels hesitant somehow.
Perhaps that is because death has only ever been spoken of as an 'end'.

However, the stance Ross showed is different.
Death is not something outside of life, but another time existing within life.
It is precisely within that process that people face others and, one last time, choose the act of 'living'.
Death is not a severance, but a form of sharing.

When we read 'On Death and Dying', we learn not to 'understand death', but to 'listen to life'.
The words and silences scattered around death are mixed with fear, anger, and a mysterious kindness.
Ross carefully gathered them up and saw in them 'humanity's final narrative'.
It is not a treatment or an education, but an act akin to prayer.
She believed that humans are beings who continue to speak until the very end.

The 'acceptance' Ross preached is not resignation, but a stance toward an open life.
Without denying anger or sadness, one simply accepts them as they are.
In that stillness, one senses the existence of others once more.
Accepting death is, in other words, nothing less than 'listening to the pain of others'.

In modern society, everything is processed quickly, and conclusions are rushed.
However, dialogue surrounding death requires time that does not rush.
Like the silence Ross spent in hospital rooms, the time spent holding onto unspoken thoughts without letting them go is the true space for understanding others.

The reason this book continues to be read for over half a century is likely because it depicted death as a 'human story'.
There are no theories there, only voices.
Fading voices, interrupted breathing, laughter mixed with tears—.
When we recall these, we touch upon the certainty of 'being alive' more than the fear of death.

Ross's philosophy is not about treating the dead as special, but about receiving the kindness that lurks within the actions and silences of those who have passed on, in our daily lives.
Learning how to listen in that way is another form of what it means for us to 'continue living'.

When I close this book in the stillness of late night, a faint warmth remains deep in my chest.
It is too small to be called hope, but it is a light that certainly does not fade.
The 'moment of dying' that Ross gazed upon may have been the moment when people 'share life' until the very end.

To speak of death is to listen to others. To listen to others is to reclaim oneself
.In that quiet exchange, people gradually change their way of living.
What Ross spent her life conveying was not salvation beyond death, but the preciousness of the 'time spent living' that exists here and now.

That is why, every time we read this book, we think:
Death is not a fear, but a calling.
—Are you prepared to listen to someone's silence?.