Note 217 — Chapter IX · THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DEATH

G. Lionel Taylor (The Stages of Human Life, N. Y., Dutton, 1921, 363 p.) says that there are four stages in the process of what he believes to be normal dying: first there is an appealing, anxious, puzzled look at the approach of a great crisis, as if wondering what the person will meet in the great darkness that is supervening, all not without an element of fear; then there supervenes a peace and poise, in which stage leavetakings are often made; third, when the last breath is drawn there is a strong impression on the bystanders that there has been a real departure, that something very actual has left, so that the body is no longer the friend. Then for perhaps an hour there is on the face of the dead a look of unnatural beauty and tranquillity which slowly fades and corruption begins.

Some in contemplating their own demise think chiefly of the isolation it involves. The most sympathetic friend can only go to the brink of the dark river which we must all cross absolutely alone. Suicide lovers sometimes vainly attempt companionship. Those about to die who are conscious of their impending departure may bid sad farewells to their friends. Aging and sickly people conscious of an impending end but with their faculties intact realize the inevitableness of dying alone no matter how many friends are about but are silent about it with an instinctive reluctance to betray any of the perturbations which weaklings, patheticists, and hystericals seek refuge in.

To others the thought of their own death centers in the idea of their body. They see themselves in thought pale, rigid, insentient, and follow the fate of their corpse in every detail at least up to interment or cremation, and some cannot resist a rather strong imaginative experience as to how their living sentient body would feel the rigidity, the cold, the treatment to which it is subjected, the gazing of friends, a custom which some interdict.

A third group focus on the cessation of activities which begins in the dimming of the senses and the weakening of motor or other powers, and here, too, we find two attitudes: that of compulsive but regretful renunciation, and the other of longing as for rest. In this sense death begins with the first abatement of powers, and as we have time slowly to adjust to progressive enfeeblement we do so more and more readily.