Rethinking Death, Grief and Care | Episode 52

Send us Fan Mail “The parcel matters, not the postman” Imagine lying in bed near the end of your life, and your mother or father is sitting beside you. No one else in the room can see them. Is it a hallucination, or a peek into the afterlife? For Professor Allan Kellehear, a leading medical and public health sociologist, that is the wrong question. It is like asking where the postman came from, when what matters is what’s in the parcel. In this episode of the Art of Dying Well podcast, Allan joins us after a career spent listening to people who are dying, beginning with a hundred interviews for his PhD. He explains why the idea that fear of death is universal owes a lot to American psychology, why so many people near the end of life report seeing someone others can’t, and why grief doesn’t end at six months or even six years. Most of all, he asks us to stop leaving death to the hospice and the hospital. Schools, workplaces and neighbours all have a part to play, and Allan tells us how. If you have ever sat with someone you love at the end of their life, or wondered how you will face your own, this one is for you.