Elisabeth Kübler-Ross - The Wheel of Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying

O THER BOOKS BY E LISABETH K BLER -R OSS

Longing to Go Back Home (Germany)

Making the Most of the In-Between (Poland)

Unfolding the Wings of Love (Germany)

Death Is of Vital Importance

On Life After Death

AIDS: The Ultimate Challenge

On Children and Death

Remember the Secret

Working It Through

Living with Death and Dying

To Live Until We Say Goodbye

The Dougy Letter (Letter to a Dying Child)

Death: The Final Stage of Growth

Questions and Answers on Death and Dying

On Death and Dying

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Contents

I dedicate this book to my childrenKenneth and Barbara .

When we have done all the work we were sent to Earth to do, we are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our soul like a cocoon encloses the future butterfly.

And when the time is right, we can let go of it and we will be free of pain, free of fears and worriesfree as a very beautiful butterfly, returning home to God...

from a letter to a child with cancer

Acknowledgments

I want to use this opportunity to thank not just my good-weather friends but those who stuck with me in good times and bad.

David Richie, whom I met in the old days of Poland and Belgium and who despite his old age continues to keep contact and visit.

Ruth Oliver, whose love has always been unconditional.

Francis Luethy, who greatly helped me through my Virginia days.

I would also like to thank Gregg Furth, Rick Hurst, Rita Feild, Ira Sapin, Steven Levine and Gladys McGarrey for many, many years of friendship.

Cheryl, Paul and their son (my godchild) ET Joseph for their frequent visits.

Dr. and Dr. Durrer for their continued friendship.

Peggy and Alison Marengo for adopting seven AIDS babies and being an inspiration to us all. As well as my goddaughter Lucy.

And naturally my two sisters, Erika and Eva, as well as Evas husband, Peter Bacher.

The W HEEL of L IFE

T HE M OUSE

(early years)

The mouse enjoys getting in and out of everything, is lively and mischievous, is always ahead of the others .

T HE B EAR

(early middle years)

The bear is very comfortable and loves to hibernate. It looks back at the early years and chuckles at the mouse as it runs around .

T HE B UFFALO

(late middle years)

The buffalo loves to roam the prairies. It reviews life in a comfortable setting and is looking forward to lifting the heavy load and becoming an eagle .

T HE E AGLE

(later years)

The eagle loves to soar high above the world, not to look down on people, but in order to encourage them to look up .

PART I

T HE M OUSE

CHAPTER ONE

There Are No Accidents

M aybe this will help. For years I have been stalked by a bad reputation. Actually I have been pursued by people who regard me as the Death and Dying Lady. They believe that having spent more than three decades in research on death and life after death qualifies me as an expert on the subject. I think they miss the point.

The only incontrovertible fact of my work is the importance of life.

I always say that death can be one of the greatest experiences ever. If you live each day of your life right, then you have nothing to fear.

Maybe this, what is certain to be my final book, will clear that up. It may also raise a few new questions and perhaps even provide the answers.

From where I sit today in the flower-filled living room of my home in Scottsdale, Arizona, the past seventy years of my life look extraordinary. As a little girl raised in Switzerland, I could never, not in my wildest dreamsand they were pretty wildhave predicted one day winding up the world-famous author of On Death and Dying , a book whose exploration of lifes final passage threw me into the center of a medical and theological controversy. Nor could I have imagined that afterward I would spend the rest of my life explaining that death does not exist.

According to my parents, I was supposed to have been a nice, church-going Swiss housewife. Instead I ended up an opinionated psychiatrist, author and lecturer in the American Southwest, who communicates with spirits from a world that I believe is far more loving and glorious than our own. I think modern medicine has become like a prophet offering a life free of pain. It is nonsense. The only thing I know that truly heals people is unconditional love.

Some of my views are unconventional. For instance, throughout the past few years I suffered a half dozen strokes, including a minor one right after Christmas 1996. My doctors warned, and then begged me to give up smoking, coffee and chocolates. But I still indulge in these tiny pleasures. Why not? It is my life.

That is how I have always lived. If I am opinionated and independent, if I am stuck in my ways, if I am a little off-center, so what? That is me.

By themselves, the pieces do not seem to fit together.

But my experiences have taught me that there are no accidents in life.

The things that happened to me had to happen.

I was destined to work with dying patients. I had no choice when I encountered my first AIDS patient. I felt called to travel some 250,000 miles each year to hold workshops that helped people cope with the most painful aspects of life, death and the transition between the two. Later in my life, I was compelled to buy a 300-acre farm in rural Virginia, where I created my own healing center and made plans to adopt AIDS-infected babies, and, though it is still painful to admit, I see that I was destined to be driven out of that idyllic place.

After announcing my intention of adopting AIDS-infected babies in 1985, I became the most despised person in the whole Shenandoah Valley, and even though I soon abandoned my plans, there was a group of men who did everything in their power short of killing me to get me to leave. They fired bullets through my windows and shot at my animals. They sent the kind of messages that made life in that gorgeous spot unpleasant and dangerous. But that was my home and I stubbornly refused to pack up.

I had moved to the farm in Head Waters, Virginia, ten years earlier. The farm embodied all my dreams and I poured all the money I earned from publishing and lectures into making it a reality. I built my house, a neighboring cabin and a farmhouse. I constructed a healing center where I held workshops, allowing me to cut down on my hectic travel schedule. I was planning to adopt AIDS-infected babies, who would enjoy however many days remained of their lives in the splendor of the outdoors.

The simple life on the farm was everything to me. Nothing was more relaxing after a long plane flight than to reach the winding driveway that led up to my house. The quiet of the night was more soothing than a sleeping pill. In the morning, I awoke to a symphony of talking cows, horses, chickens, pigs, donkeys, llamas... the whole noisy menagerie, welcoming me home. The fields rolled out as far as I could see, glistening with fresh dew. Ancient trees offered their silent wisdom.