A week after she receives her terminal cancer diagnosis, Phyllis Tickle is sitting on her porch in Tennessee, talking about death.
“I know quite a few people who get excited about having that spiritual body and being with God,” the renowned religious historian says. Then she looks at the camera.
Ready or not, 81-year-old Tickle’s body was laid to rest three months later — before her longtime friend Helen Whitney, a veteran filmmaker how produced the 2007 documentary “The Mormons,” could interview her a second time for a documentary project. The two-hour film “Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death,” which premieres this week on PBS, pushes viewers to confront their own mortality.