BJ Millar on the Today programme Radio 4
Griefcast Podcast
The way in which we handle death and dying is elemental, but it’s still taboo said US doctor B J Millar.
He’s out to change that.
Speaking on the Today programme, he said he suffered electrical burns while he was at college and lost an arm and both legs.
Being close to death, made it less scary, he said. What he felt was the power of caring and being loved and the sense that human beings are much more than their bodies.
It would be more scary to live on and not live fully, to die some day full of regrets, he said.
“We feel bad for feeling bad .. death feels like a failure...We keep it in a closet, we don’t think about it until it is too late.”
His message was simple - Make it easier to die: talk about it, think about it - and then go and live the life you want to live.
In the spirit of talking about it, you don’t get many podcasts on grief and death but Griefcast is one.
Cariad Lloyd is out to end taboos.
She chatted to DJs, presenters and writers the MacTwins - Alana and Lisa MacFarlane - about their father’s sudden death.
They went over the shock, the desperate hunt for a black dress; the fact that he would have been delighted to die as he did, on the golf course... only 20 years later.
They talked “bride of chuckie” grief, being met with pity eyes and a certain tilt of the head and the fact that everyone should have a folder listing all their passwords and account numbers.
There was plenty to make you smile ... and a few home truths along the way.
