Hey, it's Anna. I want to let you know that in this episode we talk about someone taking their own life and reference how they did it.

If you are struggling with your mental health, please reach out and call the National Mental Health Crisis Hotline. That number is 988.

I just have this bizarre love for what I see around me.

And I, this has come to really as a result of this grief.

This is Death, Sex, and Money. The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more.

I'm Anna Sale.

I've talked about grief a lot on this show. And still once in a while, I encounter a story that makes me think,

what does that sort of grief look like? That's how I felt going into this conversation with Terry Kelber.

When you talk about the death of your husband, what are the words that you use to describe how he died?

Self-immolation. That's what I use.

In 2018, Terry's husband, David Buckle, doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York.

Minutes before, he sent a note to prominent media outlets. He wrote,

most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy bifossal fuels and many die early deaths as a result.

David was 60, an environmentalist, and a former civil rights attorney.

Do you use the word suicide?

I often don't know. I tend to say he took his own life out of deep distress about the environment through self-immolation.

I'm not 100% clear other than the words you decide. I think people bring a lot of bias to that word.

It reflects people who are not rational.

I can't explain it other than I, as a word, I think it comes with a lot of assumptions about what was going on.

I'm trying not to do that part of, partly out of respect for David.

I am struck that the words that you did use, he took his own life out of deep distress about the state of the environment through self-immolation.

There's a precision rebound. I know that he convinced he thought about it for a chunk of time.

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