Death is a mystery to all of us, but Dr. B.J. Miller may have more insights on the topic than most. As a hospice and palliative care physician at the University of California, San Francisco, Miller works closely with terminally ill patients at the end of their lives. In speaking with Oprah about life and death on OWNs SuperSoul Sunday, the former executive director of the Zen Hospice Project opened up about his sense of what happens in the moments immediately following a death.

Ive been around people who are just about to die, bodies that have just died, and there is this lingering sense, Miller says. Theres a lingering.

Miller, who faced his own mortality when he lost three limbs in a freak accident , adds that knowing what happens after this lingering has become less important to him. One thing that my injuries helped me with was to not need to know, Miller says. I didnt need to have control over everything, I didnt need to know the answers anymore. I mean, I love not knowing. The answers unimportant. Its just a sacred and gorgeous moment.

Oftentimes, Miller adds, the actual moment of death is profoundly ordinary.

Ive been around folks who, Ill be sitting there talking with their family and were having a conversation, and the person dies in the middle of a conversation. And its seamless, Miller says. Its almost gorgeously ... mundane. Its just, they were here and now theyre gone. Theres a moment where its just so matter-of-fact... Thats its sort of charm. Its its beauty.

With his many years caring for the terminally ill, Miller has incredible respect for the brief period after death and strives to honor the moment of transition.

Its such a profound, stunning moment to see the body finally as a shell and devoid of that person, he says. In that moment of transition around the body, youre really in touch with the continuum of life, that life is proceeding. That individual is gone, but life goes on.

You can watch B.J. Millers full interview with Oprah right now through WatchOWN.tv.