Elizabeth Mbone Jombo

Ah-Ha Journal 4

This unit covered the death philosophies of Elizabeth, David Velleman, and Beverley Clack.

As reported by the philosophy of Clack, Death stands at the limits of human

existence. It denotes the ultimate boundary, the endpoint, for all human striving. In

existentialist philosophy, death is that which defines life. When neoliberalism aligns death

with failure., it renders impossible discussion about what it means to be a mortal subject,

standing as we all do in the shadow of death. Ignoring death’s inevitability marginalizes the

vulnerable and limits the ability to reflect on the fragility of life. by way of contrast, thinking

about mortality can restore a sense of shared experience, allowing acceptance of death’s

reality to forge the basis of a new life together. When we look death in the face, we are

reminded of the things that emerge from our shared life such as love, relationships,

friendships, and laughter. Recognizing our shared vulnerability enables us to prioritize the

things which help build connection and relationship. Besides, in the book of David Velleman,

it is documented that I agree very strongly that Our feelings about death are mixed because

we see it as the end of our life stories and we can tell those stories, and that ending, in many

different ways. We can tell the story of missing out on the future; we can tell the story of

running out of time; we can tell the story of becoming nothing but a memory. None of these

is a good story, but they are bad in different ways. Immortality is not a deprivation for the

gods, who have known forever that they would never die and who have therefore never

considered the prospect: the gods have always planned on being immortal. Their immortality

is quite different from what mortals would get if granted a reprieve. As nouveaux immortals,

human beings would have spent years contemplating their inevitable death only to be told.

Until people circumnavigated the Earth, they lived somewhere in the midst of somewhere or
other. To see where they stood, they had to close the circle. Similarly, closing the circle of

one’s life is necessary to see it as the particular life one has lived. And I want to know the

particular life I have lived before I stop living it which will entail fully living it up to the very

end.

The death philosophy that I liked more and being a healthcare worker, I greatly relate

to the experiences and interviews conducted by Elizabeth. Kübler-Ross and this book

captured the nation’s attention and reverberated through the medical and general cultures.

The very act of listening delivered illness and dying from the realm of disease and the

restricted province of doctors to the realm of lived experience and the personal domain of

individuals. On Death and Dying is rightly credited with giving rise to the hospice movement

and, by extension, the new specialty of hospice and palliative medicine but the “changes it set

in place have pervaded nearly every specialty of medicine and nursing practice. Timeless

themes within the uniquely human experience of illness knowing that one’s life will one day

end make On Death and Dying relevant to readers today. As a healthcare worker, I am struck

by how far we have come, and yet how far we still have to go to achieve truly person-

centered care. I am reminded “to listen and approach patients who are seriously ill in a spirit

of fellowship and service, for they are on a journey that none of us would choose but all of us

must eventually travel. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross held up a mirror to Americans, reflecting their

attitudes, assumptions, and behaviors toward people living with a terminal illness. People

didn’t like what they saw. Through the medium of On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-

Ross added how we die to the agenda of cultural revolutions taking place in realms of the

environment, social rights, and health care.

I cannot count the feelings about death, I cannot translate the question of either death is bad

or good. Being a healthcare worker, I believe the death of every individual is that reality

which we cannot deny, and after death what we will face or experience is far beyond our
imagination. Various questions arise after studying death from different perspectives, the life

after death exists or not? If it exists how and where we experience it?