New site offers safe place to talk about death

You will die.

While this certainly does not come as news to you, it is news you fight to ignore. You know, Dylan Thomas — “Do not go gentle into that good night/Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/Rage, rage against the dying of the light” — and all that jazz.

Rage all you like, but thinking about the inevitable is the idea behind a series of provocative and important library talks being given by WGN-TV reporter Randi Belisomo and Dr. Mary Mulcahy, Associate Professor in the Department of Hematology Oncology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

They are the co-founders of Life Matters Media (lifemattersmedia.org), which provides free online resources about end-of-life planning.

Belisomo was only 27 when death came screaming into her life: Her husband lost his yearlong fight with colon cancer. His name was Carlos Hernandez Gomez. He was 36 years old.

He was widely liked and admired. As if a character from an earlier, more colorful journalism age, he wore a fedora, thick black glasses, bow ties and had a rapid-fire style of questioning.

“It’s easy to say that every reporter is, to put it kindly, ‘unique.’ But Carlos was, especially in his passion for political reporting and political history,” says the Tribune’s chief political reporter, Rick Pearson. “His education and knowledge easily gave him the ability to put context into his reporting, something that is largely absent from much of political coverage. His staccato questioning of elected officials and candidates was as informative as it was entertaining. There really isn’t a day that I don’t think of Carlos.”

Mulcahy was Gomez’s oncologist, and in the wake of his death on Jan. 17, 2010, she and Belisomo founded Life Matters Media. Its stated aim is to provide “information, resources and support for all involved in end of life decision-making. Through fostering better communication, we will empower the ill, aged, caregivers, surrogates and medical providers to navigate this life phase with confidence and dignity.”

The website is handsome and informative and it came to life a couple of weeks ago in the auditorium of the Harold Washington Library as Belisomo and Mulcahy talked about death (I added a few words, mostly about the writing of obituaries). The crowd was small but attentive and it heard Belisomo say, among many things, that neither she nor Gomez “knew how to talk about death” and that such conversations can be “daunting and scary” and that she now believes the subject can be “more easily broached if we talk about life, how to live the best possible life until … until we don’t live anymore.”

Mulcahy noted how detailed the preparations are for life when a new baby is on the way and said we should all be asking, “What do you want the end of your life to be like?”

Rather than being gloomy, the conversation was passionate and lively and enlightening.

Craig Davis, the director of adult services for the Chicago Public Library system, had booked the duo and sat in the audience and listened. A few days later he said: “End-of-life planning is a difficult subject for many. Most people face this issue at some point, whether in regard to themselves or a loved one. Oftentimes, the issue arises suddenly and unexpectedly, with serious emotional and even financial consequences. A program such as this provides information and encouragement to help spark the difficult conversations necessary to chart a path towards a more thoughtful, shared process when planning end-of-life strategies. The future is not guaranteed and this is an ever-timely topic that should be addressed by everyone, now rather than later.”

True words, those: The future is not guaranteed.

But on Thursday from 3-7 p.m. Mulcahy will be at the Sulzer Library, 4455 N. Lincoln Ave., and Belisomo will be at the Woodson Library, 9525 S. Halsted St. They will each be joined by professional advance care facilitators, who, Belisomo refers to as “conversation partners,” eager to talk anyone interested in chatting about death, and, in so doing, about life itself.

“After Hours With Rick Kogan” airs 9-11 p.m. Sundays on WGN-AM 720.

rkogan@tribpub.com Twitter @rickkogan