By Staff Writer, Jill Lee

            What if you found out that you only had two months left to live?

            If you do not live a timed life right now, thinking about it may get you excited about leaving the mundane world.

            “I could do whatever I want. I wouldn’t have to worry about the future!” Cameron Burton (‘11) said.

            But really, what difference does it make when, all of a sudden, the remainder of you life actually changes from decades to just a few months (if even that)? How would you feel if the things you dreamed of doing had to be done within a matter of weeks?

            “[Sooner or later] you realize that, one day, you won’t exist in this world anymore,” psychology teacher Kate Duggan said.

            Faced with the truth that the end is near, one is thrown into a sludgy pool of melancholy and loneliness.

            At first, one does not want to believe that death is coming because it is often entirely unexpected. Denial is the first stage of the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ Kübler-Ross model, also known as the Five Stages of Grief.

            “At first, patients don’t want to believe that their lives are coming to an end, as they are faced with death,” clinical psychologist Christine Bouckaert said.

            Then, anger, the second step of the so-called Five Stages, gradually takes over because “life wasn’t supposed to be this way.” You ask yourself, why me?

            “You feel that what’s happening to you is unjust and that you don’t deserve such a thing,” Bouckaert said.

            The third step, bargaining, is when one tries to “cut a deal” with God, the doctor, or anyone else that comes within reach: Okay, fine, I have to die. But please, I’ll be really good! Just give me a couple more years and let me see my children graduate, please. . .

            Unfortunately, life does not work that way. The reality is that we live in a harsh and cruel world. Denying the facts does not help, getting angry is ineffective, and bargaining cannot bring about miracles. Here is where the fourth stage comes in: Depression. Why bother.
            Depression is followed by a fifth and final stage: acceptance.

            These stages, of course, are not meant to be in exact order. For example, one could feel angry at the terrible news, and then start to feel sad, and later be mad again. He can “accept, then go back to denial,” Duggan said.

            Also, a person faced with death does not have to go through all of these stages. He could be doing everything but accepting his short life, or he could feel angry, bargain, feel sad, and accept, but never deny.

            It is extremely important that people eventually learn to accept. With the short time that they have, they learn and grow up to be a wiser person. What they learn in a matter of a few months takes us, “regular” people, years to finally comprehend.

            As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever.”