Death By Design

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The first You’re Going to Die: Poetry, Prose & Everything Goes happened on March 6th, 2009 - a simple poetry night held in the golden belly of a San Francisco apartment. After that first occurrence, it quickly spilled into the community spaces of the city, filling local cafes & dark bars with the words & songs of its people. And now the event [finding its current form & home as a half open mic/half curated event that’s open to everything, held every month in San Francisco’s Mission district] has given way to a larger manifestation of its title, one that encompasses more than simply open mics & shows…

Now, the You’re Going to Die movement is a deeper & more varied exploration of death & dying, one driven by creativity, fueled by arts & entertainment, writing & music, interviews & stories, but always with the continued commitment to bring people creatively into the conversation of death & dying, while helping to inspire & empower out of an unabashed embrace of our losses & mortality…

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For 40 years, Cathy has been making films that explore consciousness and encourage progressive change. While in college in the early 70s she joined the Santa Cruz Women’s Media Collective. They produced a series of cable TV programs by and about women’s issues. Cathy was one of the first women in North America to be a camera assistant and documentary cinematographer.

Cathy subsequently directed and produced a short, humorous, personal film called Lost Love (1982). In 1986, she produced a 90-minute documentary about the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, a nine-month cross-country journey of roughly 500 dedicated souls. The film, Just One Step: The Great Peace March, led to her making a film of the first Soviet-American Peace March, marriage to the talented cameraman Edis Jurcys, and raising a family together. Along the way, she became a cranio-sacral biodynamic healer.

In the early 2000s, Cathy co-created Holy Rascals, a project that generated short videos about the perennial wisdom of spiritual elders and the cutting-edge teachings of emerging paradigms of independent spirituality (transcending theology and religion).

Cathy’s most recent project, Living While Dying, sheds light on end of life.  Through experiences with a deathwalker, friends and her mother, they share their opinions on living knowing death will come to us all, but knowing that we are living while dying.

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Pam MacPherson’s involvement with end-of-life care and advocacy bean in 1964 when she graduated from the Jeanne Mance School of Nursing.  Pam later received training as a hospice volunteer and served as Hospice Volunteer Coordinator for the Visiting Nurse Association of Chittenden and Grand Isle County (VNA) from 1988 to 2004, a position to which she brought passion and dedication.  After retirement, Pam had more time and energy to give to community resources dealing with quality end-of-life care.  Pam has been a hospice volunteer for over thirty years as well as well as a volunteer at the UVM Medical Center in their No One Dies Alone program.  She became a vigil volunteer; sitting with those facing end of life alone.

It was during and after these vigils visits, Pam hand wrote about her experiences.  She wrote each poem in private journals, describing it as “my safe place for processing; my haven for unfiltered, unedited writing.”  Her book of poems will touch a part of your heart, and inspire you to live boldly, love unconditionally and embrace those living while dying.  Pam’s poems are a must read for those working with the dying.

Andrew Macpherson serves as Principal at Healthsperien, LLC, a Washington, DC-based health policy consulting firm and as Senior Policy Adviser to several national end-of-life care organizations, including the National Partnership for Hospice Innovation and the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC).

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The president and founder of Bon’s Eye Marketing, Stephen Bon possesses more than 10 years of experience in news and feature writing as well as graphic design, editing and marketing strategy. He was awarded by the American Institute for Graphic Arts (Raleigh/Charlotte Chapter) for his cutting-edge design and layout. He’s also received past honors for writing by the North Carolina Press Association.  

Wilmington-based healthcare brand and message company employs proven healthcare communications strategies to change face of patient-provider relationship.

Today’s patients want to be heard, understood and feel genuinely cared for. But they’re not, according to one study that finds more than 80% of consumers are unsatisfied with their healthcare experience. From time-spent-with-patient to medical billing issues, today’s doctor’s office or hospital visits seem less refuges of healing and more lairs of liability.

Personify Health, recently launched under the Bon’s Eye Marketing banner, envisions a “heads-up” culture of healthcare by working with regional and national practices to bridge the gap in patient-provider communications and improve the patient experience.

So what’s changed since the days of house calls, when the patient-provider relationship was as much about communication, trust and transparency as it was a prescription?

With the advent of technologies like the internet, healthcare has transformed at the speed of light. Unfortunately, most patients have not, leaving many feeling increasingly alienated by a culture of “heads-down” healthcare. In short, healthcare no longer feels human.

Using carefully scripted narratives and cinematic video techniques, Personify Health humanizes healthcare providers by featuring them beyond the white coat in various activities that personify their true nature. From these one-to-two minute videos, current and prospective patients learn about their providers, their compatibility with them, and their philosophy of care. Personify Health also uses a wide variety of other more traditional healthcare communications tools to bridge the patient-provider gap and optimize patient experience.

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Ageism is the one “ism” that doesn’t discriminate based on race, gender or socio-economic status. And it is the one “ism” that harms all of us. Anti-ageism advocate Ashton Applewhite says can we improve our physical and psychological health by fighting back!

Ashton is the founder of two popular blogs: ThisChairRocks.com and Yo,IsThisAgeist.com

Ashton is an internationally reknown speaker on the subject of ageism. I highly recommend that you watch her T.E.D. talk Let’s End Ageism.

Her book This Chair Rocks: A manifesto on ageism is rated 5 stars on Amazon!

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From Jon & Michelle Braddock

It was no different for us when Michelle’s father, Ted, passed away in 2013. Ted’s death was unexpected, and while our family was dealing with our sudden loss we were doing our best to make funeral and burial arrangements that we hoped would be pleasing to him. We didn’t know what Ted’s final wishes were.

As it turned out, that was only the beginning of our struggles. Soon after the final arrangements were made and Ted was laid to rest, we began the task of sorting through his finances. Michelle’s father was a private man. He handled all of the household finances and hadn’t really shared any information with his wife or the family.

It took us nearly 10 months of digging through boxes and files and making exhaustive phone calls to locate all of the bank accounts, insurance policies, safe deposits, retirement and pension accounts, online accounts, and more. When we spoke with others about our situation, we found we were not alone.

That’s when My Life and Wishes was born. We felt that there had to be a better way. Survivors shouldn’t have to go through this kind of stress, when the hardship and sadness of the loss alone are enough. My Life and Wishes was created to be an easy-to-use platform that allows users to record all the information their loved ones will need at the time of loss.

It’s our hope that My Life & Wishes will protect your family and give you peace of mind that the details of your affairs are safe, organized, and easily accessible to your loved ones.

https://www.mylifeandwishes.com

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Randi Belisomo, DBe, is the President and Co-Founder of Life Matters Media. She serves as a reporter at WGN-TV in Chicago and is a frequent contributor to Chicago Public Radio, Relevant Radio and WGN 720 AM. She writes about issues related to end of life healthcare and policy for Reuters Health.

Belisomo holds a doctorate from Loyola University-Chicago in bioethics and health policy, as well as an M.S.J. from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Notre Dame. She is a multiple Emmy Nominee and a Peter Lisagor Award winner for best in-depth series, best feature and best sports story.

She currently serves on the boards of Living Water International and Mental Health America- Illinois. She is a chair person of the Carlos Hernandez Award in Meritorious Journalism at DePaul University and a member of the Illinois Task Force for the Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST). She is a Respecting Choices certified advance care planning facilitator and instructor.

Having served as a caregiver and widowed at a young age, Belisomo knows that end of life issues impact everyone at some point. She hopes that through the work of Life Matters Media, the inevitable challenges with which life presents and often surprises us will be made easier for the organization’s audiences.

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What I’m learning is that we all come to this crossroads of life and death with a personal story that invokes some of us to action.  Barbara Bates Sedoric, a former Estates and Trust paralegal, has always been a person who was “prepared” and “ready” until she was not.  The unexpected death of her mother pushed Barbara into a chaotic world that left little room for grief. She found herself and her family in the same whirlwind of countless hours searching for documents, hurried phone calls and meetings with attorneys, funeral directors, clergy and florists as she experienced with clients she served.  Barbara knew there had to be a better way.  The LastingMatters organizer helps families prepare for the unknown prior to a death.  It’s a helpful tool because the gift of information is the greatest gift you can give to those you love. 

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Ellen Goodman is a true media pioneer.  She started her career as a researcher for Newsweekmagazine and went on to become one of the first women to write for the publication’s op-ed pages. In 1980, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary. 

No reporter skills, however, could uncover her mother’s voice in order to talk deeply and specifically about her desires and wishes when she was facing her end her life. Like the majority of us, Ellen struggled and questioned the decisions she was making on her mother’s behalf.  “Have I made the right decisions for my mother?” she asked herself.  Ellen never wanted her family or friends to feel that same burden. Ellen realized after her mother’s death how much easier it would have been if she could have heard her mother’s voice guiding her throughout all the difficult discussions. Ellen knew she had missed the opportunity to have a conversation.

 “The Conversation Project” was created in 2010 when Ellen and a group of colleagues, concerned members of  the media, clergymen, and medical professionals came together to share stories of “good deaths” and “bad deaths.”  In 2011, The Conversation Project began a partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in order to create momentum and awareness for their “Conversation” initiative. 

Today, “The Conversation Project” includes a team of seasoned law and media professionals along with a group of journalists who are working pro bono alongside IHI staff members to bring a wealth of expertise to the project.

“I realized only after my mother’s death how much easier it would have all been if I heard her voice in my ear as these decisions had to be made.”  ―Ellen Goodman

http://theconversationproject.org/

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