Good Grief!

So many of us, we don’t want to think about death. We avoid grieving when we lose someone, distract ourselves, look away. In this episode, at a moment when so many families are mourning, we have stories of people figuring out how they’ll grieve, and doing a pretty good job of it. Prologue: Ira talks with comedian Rob Delany, who suffered the worst kind of loss a parent can endure — the death of his two-year-old son, Henry. Rob describes what his grief has been like and what he’s learned from it. (11 minutes) Goodbye Mr. Facey: Producer Chana Joffe-Walt wondered what it was like for surviving MTA employees coping with the loss of their co-workers due to Covid-19. She met one in particular who’s had a hard time saying goodbye. (12 minutes) Here's the memorial video the transit authority in New York City made to remember its workers who died from COVID. When It Rains: Producer Sean Cole has, unfortunately, experienced something known as “cumulative grief” this year. He writes about the multiple upheavals he’s been dealing  with. (13 minutes) The Caretaker: Producer Bim Adewunmi travels to the site in Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered by a police officer. It’s become a huge, make-shift memorial, big enough to absorb the grief of all-comers who wish to pay homage. (10 minutes) All My Love: One of the 590,000 casualties of U.S. Covid-19 this year was Leiah Danielle Jones. She was one of the “long haulers,” and she died in March 2021. But not before writing her own obituary. (7 minutes)