Lessons to Die For    

(From in the March 2024 issue of Brazos Monthly magazine, a publication of the Brazosport Facts)

In the late summer of 1974 the Astros were plodding through a season where they would lose exactly as many games as they won, President Nixon was on the brink of losing his job, and I was a losing my patience standing in a ridiculously long line to sign up for courses at Sam Houston State University.

For my second stab at higher education.

The first pathetic attempt had gotten me drafted (by the aforementioned President Nixon).  Two years later I showed up again with my honorable discharge in hand, GI Bill monthly checks, and a commitment to be a much better student. I finally got to register for a full slate of courses; four were required on my degree plan and I had room for one elective. The girl I’d been standing in line behind had told me a particular professor was fantastic. Since I had followed her all morning I followed her advice.

So I fell into the clutches of Dr. Richard Cording, the head of the Philosophy Department, and I took the introductory course in a discipline I knew nothing about. The girl was right; he proved to be one of the best teachers I’ve known, making complex texts and concepts understandable and encouraging lively discussions in class.  I ended up taking enough classes with him to end one course shy of a second minor, in philosophy.

One of those courses focused on human mortality, and humans’ reactions to it. We delved that semester into various things like Senica’s treatise ‘On the Shortness of Life’ and Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illyich.  But the book that most caught my attention was On Death and Dying by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in which she rolls out her theory that became world famous as the five stages of death.

They are, in order: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance (DABDA for those of us who need mnemonics to remember lists).  They work, of course (if they work at all), only if a person knows that their death is imminent and has sufficient time to ponder the situation. And they also work, according to Kubler-Ross, on the loved ones of people who are dying.  Think about it; someone is given by their doctor a short span of time to live. It’s reasonable to assume that the person (and their family) would first be unable to accept it as a fact, then to be angry about it, then maybe they would resort to bargaining (‘If this can go away I’ll never smoke another cigarette’ and/or ‘I’ll be a better person’), then a dive into depression would be understandable. And finally, hopefully, there would come acceptance of what is inevitable and all concerned, patient and family, will make the best of the time left and tie up some loose ends.

Dr. Cording never dwelled on the depressing aspect of the subject of that course. He was too upbeat for that. When we got to the five stages he suggested they work in other parts of life than at the end of it, maintaining  that we probably go through the five stages when anything traumatic happens, be it major or minor. Like losing our wallet. First we absolutely refuse to believe we were careless enough to have lost it, then we get mad at ourselves. Then we’ll propose a bargain (maybe with ourselves; maybe with Someone considerably … higher up the ladder) that if we can just find it, we’ll never lose it again. Then we’ll get down in the dumps and feel sorry for ourselves, and finally we’ll accept the situation and start cancelling credit cards, get a new driver’s license, and buy something new to keep them in. 

In none of the courses I took from Dr. Cording did he ever let the inevitable topics of faith or lack of it or of deism or atheism or agnosticism go beyond healthy academic discussion.  And it must have been difficult for him to keep those discussions on an even keel, especially in that class centering on death. Even so, I got the impression that he believed in some sort of an afterlife, probably from the time he spent on Plato’s Phaedo, about Socrates drinking the cup of hemlock the state ordered him to drink for the crime of encouraging the young men of Athens to consider every possibility and question each one.  Something Dr. Cording had his students do every day. He paid particular attention to the bit in the Phaedo about Socrates believing that the soul must be immortal.  It made me wonder if our teacher and I were of the same opinion about that.

Twenty-five years after I took that introductory class with Dr. Cording our daughter Kara had him for probably the same course. He had just stepped down after a long tenure as Dean of the School of  Humanities at SHSU and was teaching again.  Eventually he retired.  

When I’d been his student he’d lit a fire in me that I hadn’t known needed lighting.  I was already an avid reader and lover of history, but he opened a whole new world for me.  When I got the news several years ago that he had died, I wondered for just a moment if he checked off Dr. Kubler-Ross’ five stages as he went through them, just to make sure she was correct.

I’ll have to ask him when I see him again.