Elisabeth Kübler-Ross dying led to the book "On Death and Dying" in 1969. In it, she proposed the now famous Five Stages of Grief as a pattern of adjustment: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In general, individuals experience most of these stages when faced with their imminent death. The five stages have since been adopted by many as applying to the survivors of a loved one's death, as well. Kübler-Ross encouraged the hospice care movement, believing that euthanasia prevents people from completing their 'unfinished business'. In 1977 she persuaded her husband to buy forty acres of land in Escondido, California, near
Phases and Stages to accept the situation and his grief, but still in a self-centered way. In "Heaven and Hell", the man expresses his ambivalence about living without his wife, with the lyric: "Sometimes it's heaven, sometimes it's hell, and sometimes I don't even know." The final track is "Phases and Stages/Pick Up the Tempo/Phases and Stages", in which the man reveals his inability to change his character, and accepts his nature and its consequences. Although Nelson admitted the subject of many of the songs was “grief, grief, and more grief,” he also clarified, “The overall theme was not a reflection of my