Bill- I really like your Stages of Death post...Kubler Ross wrote the book, On Death and Dying, which I read years ago when my father died....but I read it then from the perspective of a grieving daughter. I like how this description speaks from the voice of the patient's process.
The hard part is that my Aunt has always had "issues"....so her process with her illness, and now her failing, is colored by her emotional and mental lifelong patterns (learned helplessness, passive-aggressiveness, entitlement, severe co-dependency, etc), which were worsening even before her COPD/cardiac diagnosis 10 years ago (which adds it's own "stuff" as we've talked about with the 02 deprivation, etc.).
But as I read your post, I'm trying to visualize in my mind my "special aunt" from my childhood, and recognise that in there somewhere is a hurting, frightened woman trying to come to grips with those stages on some level.
Thanks.
You folks are all great.
