Just as there are stages in the labor and delivery of a baby, there are stages in the dying process.  When the doctor tells you that you are pregnant, the first thing they do is give you all kinds of written and verbal information.  You sign up for Lamaze classes.  There is much support and most people know what to expect throughout the whole process.  You can take a class to learn how to have a baby, but there are no classes that I know of that teach the process of dying.

     When the doctor gives you a potentially terminal diagnosis what happens?  They talk all about chemotherapy, radiation or treatment... "how are we going to fight this?" And that is fine because there is a time to fight but there comes the time to let go.  Usually, no one sits down with you and talks about the dying process, gives written information about anything to do with dying, or even let you know where you can find this information if you should need it.  If you had this information you would recognize the symptoms even if the doctor or anyone were not ready to admit it yet. 

     Medicine took the normal process of dying out of the home and made it something technical/clinical that needed to include a hospital visit.  If we treated death as a normal stage of life we wouldn't have to be so afraid of the unknown. Families wouldn't have to suffer the angst of thinking their decisions of care may kill their family member because the dying process is out of their control. We have to learn to talk about dying.  I talk about the physical symptoms first and I talk about the spiritual ones.