10/15/2025
Preparing for the Death of Someone You Love (Part 15)
~Choices in Coping with Dying~
The choices you make when your loved one is dying can help you appreciate the time you now have together. They can enable you to use that time as well as you can to benefit your loved one, yourself and others who are involved in what is going on. These choices also help prepare you for what lies ahead. As a result, it is fair to say that these coping choices are a way of empowering yourself.
~A Broad Range of Reactions~
Some people have focused on a limited number of psycho-social reactions that have been described as typical of persons who are coping with dying. Often, those reactions have been linked together as "stages" in what has been thought to be a specific way of coping with dying.
When your loved one is dying, it would be far better to think about a broad range of reactions and responses that you and your loved one may be experiencing is this:
We Should Listen Actively to Each Individual Person Who is Coping with Dying.
If we fail to pay attention to individual human beings in this way, we could find ourselves labeling them in a hurtful and harmful way. That is, we would be allowing ourselves to rest content with generalizations about those individuals. As a result, we would blind ourselves to the unique and distinctive qualities of each person who is coping with dying.
Don't treat your loved on as if he or she were only a generalization and not an individual, unique person. Also, don't treat yourself or allow others to treat you as if you were any less than your loved one.
