If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.
Eleanora Duse

Introduction to Dying

Die: "To pass from an animate to a lifeless state; to cease to live; to suffer a total and irreparable loss of action of the vital functions; to become dead; to expire; to perish..."

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Coping

Coping is defined as "constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person."  More simply, coping is not mastering the stressful demands, but rather trying to manage stressful demands as best we can.  Often coping involves becoming content to accept, endure, minimize, or avoid stressful demands. I doubt if  there is a more stressful situation that a person having to face his/her own imminent death.

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Awareness


A couple of important topics of any discussion about dying involves the rate of dying and how aware everyone is of the condition of the dying person.

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