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My son’s death was ‘absolutely beautiful’

Jessica works as a trauma nurse in the US. Death is part of her work but it wasn't until the tragic death of her young son that she began to see it in a very different way.

Jessica Hanson is determined that people should be able to have, what she calls 'a beautiful death'. She believes that a 'good' experience of death can be unexpectedly empowering for loved ones and she trains doctors and nurses to help them make this a possibility. It all stems from losing her young son Mason, three years ago. Jessica works as a trauma nurse in the state of Arizona in the US and before the death of her son, death wasn't something she thought about that deeply.

In the 1960s, a bunch of musically gifted, pre-teen siblings from Saigon put together a rock ‘n’ roll group. For a while the CBC Band was the biggest music act in South Vietnam, even headlining the country’s first international rock festival. They had an unlikely fan base – battle-weary US soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. A longer version of this programme is available on the Outlook podcast.

(Image: Jessica Hanson. Courtesy of Jessica Hanson.)

Available now

53 minutes

Last on

Thu 14 Feb 2019 04:06GMT

Broadcasts

  • Wed 13 Feb 2019 12:06GMT
  • Wed 13 Feb 2019 16:06GMT
  • Wed 13 Feb 2019 18:06GMT
  • Wed 13 Feb 2019 21:06GMT
  • Wed 13 Feb 2019 23:06GMT
  • Thu 14 Feb 2019 04:06GMT

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Podcast: Lives Less Ordinary

Podcast: Lives Less Ordinary

Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected