Good Grief

Have you checked your ticket recently?

No, not the one from easyJet–the one you were issued at birth.  The one that states your final destination: but not your time of arrival.

Make no mistake, the Reaper is coming.  In all likelihood, he will claim many of your loved ones before you feel the sickle yourself.  And– unless your amygdala’s broken— when your friends and family die, you are going to grieve.

Yet why are most of us so surprised by grief?  Is there a way we can prepare for grief’s inevitable journey?  Can it even be, as tonight’s guest proclaims, a tool of transformation?

Tonight we talk to someone on the front line of the life/death divide.  Clinical psychologist Dr. Sameet Kumar has spent the last fifteen years counseling the terminally ill and their families. Unlike most authors, if and when you buy his book, Grieving Mindfully: A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping with Loss, he offers his  condolences. But fret not: before things get all touchy-feely, Pete goes off (half-Coxed?) on Dr. Kumar’s inspiration: His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Who’s the tool?  You decide.  Good grief!