Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is dead
Actually, this happened more than a week ago.
She passed away on August 24, according to her website. I heard about it via a blog just yesterday. If you’re not familiar with her, she’s the one responsible for the Five Stages of Death and Dying. She was an interesting character who contributed quite a bit to the psychological community, even though she developed a bit of an odd reputation at the end there.
I present this as a “Personal” entry because my father worked with her. Most folks don’t know about it, but the “legwork”, so to speak, for her book On Death Dying was done through a hospital chaplaincy program. A lot of her work involved administering surveys and questionaires to hospital chaplains who were working with people that were in the process of grieving. My father was one of the people who helped make that happen. One of the two, in fact. As memory serves, he was working for the AMA in a religious capacity. Something to do with morality and ethics in medicine, as well as the religious components contained therein. In any case, it’s one of those personal anecdotes that my father has collected over the years. I hope I’ll have a few one day.
(Well, I already do. Sometime I’ll have to write about how I met the #4 boss in the Chicago “Family”. Or, Milton Erickson, for that matter. And, even how I exchanged e-mail with the inventor of ping, Mike Muuss.)
