I’ve just watched a Channel 4 series called My Last Summer in which five people who are terminally ill come together over the course of a year to share their experiences of facing death. It’s not an easy watch, but like every programme in which people speak honestly and openly about their feelings, it’s compelling and important. The saddest thing is that, having forged deep new friendships and given each other the kind of support that only someone in the same situation is able to offer, they have to face the deaths of three of the group over the course of the filming. In some ways their grief is stronger for each other than for themselves.

Each of them is dealing with their situation differently –  Ben has cut himself off from all his friends and is waiting out his time alone in his flat, while Jane stoically refuses to let her poor health get the better of her, and clings to her dignity and good cheer with an iron grip. The one who really seems to have it sorted is Lou, who has Motor Neurone disease; she faces death with a clear-eyed realism that in no way diminishes her ability to live life in the moment.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to know that you will be gone very soon, perhaps leaving behind young children and grieving spouses. We see the participants’ families coping with their immintent bereavement – some with clarity and practicality, some with denial. How on earth do you explain to young children that mummy or daddy is going to die soon? Should you?

Sonja, the girlfriend/wife (they married 3 hours before his death) of one of the participants, Junior, expresses her raw unmitigated grief at his death straight to the camera, to us, in a very moving way. It made me realise how rare it is to see someone genuinely ‘feeling’ in public. Of course there are more tears on TV than there used to be, but still  people break down in the middle of an unbearably sad story about their lives and then apologise for welling up. Is it just their own embarassment or are they afraid of making others uncomfortable?

Programmes like My Last Summer play an important role in showing us the feeling side of life – how complex it is, how little understood, how hard to express in a world that sees vulnerability as weakness. But there was nothing weak about Sonja’s grief, or about any of the participants’ experience – it was powerful and illuminating, and I’m deeply grateful to them for sharing it.