BJ Miller

All right.

But BJ Miller, I've wanted to talk to him for a long time.

He's a hospice and palliative care physician, co-founder of Metal Health, which is a virtual palliative care practice for patients and caregivers.

He's also author of a book, which I've read.

And it was at the very end of medical school that I happened by chance to do a palliative care elective, um, with the man who became the mentor.

BJ Miller, who's an amazing and an amazing palliative care doctor.

And I just watch him take a totally different approach to patients.

We weren't there to just get in and out.

And if you write them as a series or a collection, or you write them kind of as a work in progress and you keep adding onto it, whatever it is, the fact is you have showed that you care enough about them that you want to communicate how you feel about them and what's important to you.

One of the things that BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger talk about in their book is having something, I think they call it a death box.

And I don't know if you suggest having this.

I actually think I'm going to start this.

They're not letters that aren't recordings, video recordings or audio recordings.

So one of my questions was going to be, when do you suggest doing this? And it sounds like the sooner, the better.

And I, In reading BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger's book and sort of stepping back, like one of the reasons I really want to do this is that I really believe that doing the work now enables us to actually live more fully.

So I was wondering if you have seen that.

Dawn Gross, a palliative care doctor, and she introduced me to Leah, a 34-year-old mother on her third set of lungs, dying of cystic fibrosis, who wanted to write a letter about kindness to her sons for all time.

And then I met BJ Miller, and I started volunteering at Zen Hospice Project, and then I was at By The Bay Health.

And then one day in the grocery store, a friend of a friend accosted me and said, "Could you help me write a love letter for all time to my husband?" And of course I did, and I realized at that moment that while a diagnosis is a catalyst, that mortality was catalyst enough.

And it seems to me, more than 10 years later, more than 700 letters later, that just about everyone has a letter yet to be written.