The Christian philosophy on death has long been that there is life after death. “Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5: 8) We are supposed to take solace in the fact that while although our earthly body will be no more, our spirit or soul will move on into immortality. Since life after death seems like a simple enough concept, death should be no big deal, right? We should just view it as a step in becoming closer to God. While in theory, we should just take death in stride, even for those who wholeheartedly believe in life after death find it difficult to accept death. We find it difficult to visualize and conceptualize the afterlife and what our role will be in it. People cope with death differently. Some choose to combat it head on, others choose to simply ignore it all together. However most people fall somewhere in between those two extremes. “Dying person will use belief systems as they have throughout there entire life—constructively, destructively, or not at all” This saying generally tends to hold true as one dies.
All people cope with death differently however, by in large, most people go through some form of Kübler-Ross model of grieving. The Kubler-Ross model contains five stages that people go through while contemplating their own death. The first stage is denial. In this stage the person grieving thinks that "This can't be happening." In the second stage, anger, the griever says, "Why me? It's not fair?!" (either referring to God, oneself, or anybody perceived, rightly or wrongly, as "responsible") The third stage is bargaining. In this stage, the dying person says, “I know its me but…” or “Please just let me live to see…” “The bargaining can be directed toward God which if the bargain is perceived as accepted can lead to a sense of hope or resignation, or anger, guilt, or fear if the bargain is perceived as denied”. The fourth stage is depression, which is arguably the hardest to go through. During the depression stage the dying person takes time to grieve his/her own death. The final stage is acceptance in which the dying person is “ready to go”. While not everyone goes through these stages in exactly this order, almost everyone goes through these stages in one form or another. They may experience the stages out of order, skip a stage, or even go through the cycle multiple times.
