healing, growing, dying in chapter "A broader view healing" Margaret Coberly argues dying a healing process -discovery. We find a similar claim coming Mwalimu lmara essay "Dying Last Stage Growth" asserts: "dying stage life experienced profound growth event total life's experience.
According to Mwalimu Imara's essay "Dying as the Last Stage of Growth," rather than rejecting death as abnormal (for death comes to us all) or fearing death, death should be viewed as simply another stage of life. Imara recounts the experience of a woman who said that she lived more fully in the last months of her life than she did throughout her entire existence, because only then was she able to appreciate the goodness in people and open herself up enough to be emotionally vulnerable (Imara 1975: 154). The same could be said of Leo Tolstoy's character Ivan Ilyich.
Throughout most of his life, Ilyich is an ambitious, grasping man, doing anything he can to get ahead professionally. He believes his wife and children love him, but they really only care about the material objects he can provide...
When Ilyich is injured, and begins to die of the kidney failure brought about by his injury, most of his relatives and associates pull away in disgust. They are afraid of death, as if his ill health will affect their pleasures and as if they will never die. Only the compassionate peasant Gerasim takes a philosophical attitude towards death, saying that it comes to everyone.
Ilyich initially takes the point-of-view of most of society, wondering how someone who 'lived so well' as himself could die. However, during the last hours of his life, he finally finds peace. He no longer resists death or is angry at his surviving family. He learns to appreciate the simple compassion and strength of Gerasim, the only man who does not seem disgusted by his illness. Imara would say that only during the last days of his life does Ilyich achieve full personhood and escape the social strictures imposed upon him by society of what it meant to be a successful person. Ilyich no longer defines success in material terms, or even the ability to live longer, but in the ability…
