ABSTRACT
The ambivalence and the emotional jockeying of the roller coaster of dying divert attention away from considerations of death and dying and individualize the grieving process. The emotional roller coaster journey of the patient from hope to despair back to hope again is largely a consequence of peaks and valleys in the progression of physical disease and the patient’s perception of the disease. The uneasy, commingled ebb and flow of hope and despair is a product of the modern, technocratic approach to death, and occurs largely in a context of denial and hidden truth. For example, La Fontaine’s portrait of the death of a peasant portrays the harmony that existed between living and dying. The dying peasant recognizes for himself that he is dying. He is able to know that death is approaching because he has lived in an intimate familiarity with death for much of his life.
