On a drizzly evening, diners dodge raindrops as they hurry into a Tinley Park restaurant.
Eight of this night’s patrons are escorted to an alcove in the back of Gatto’s Restaurant and Bar and seated at a table just beneath the large chalkboard menu announcing pastas, seafood and various Italian specialties.
They shake hands, order wine and prepare to have a conversation that some people would, well, rather die than join. They are here to talk about death, an event that everyone will have to face yet few are comfortable discussing.
“We want to start that conversation,” said Tami Neumann, co-founder of Silver Dawn Training Institute, based in Romeoville, which provides senior healthcare education to professional and family caregivers. “The reason we’re doing it over dinner is because sometimes it’s easier to talk to each other about sensitive things while we’re breaking bread.”
The event is modeled after a national movement called “Death Over Dinner.”
Seated at the table on this Tuesday night are industry experts, clinicians and counselors, all of whom work in the death or dying profession. They deal with other people’s end-of-life issues all of the time. On this evening, they will face some of their own.
In addition to Neumann, there is Cathy Braxton, her business partner; Jeff Long, a chaplain with Midwest Chaplain Services; Kerry Baader, who works for a publication on aging; LaTunya Bradley, regional director of business development for Symphony Post Acute Network; Terri Maxeiner, a nurse who started Bridge Care Consulting; Mary Kay Kunke, home health and hospice consultant; and JoAnn Michalik, founder of Ouch-its-Grief certified grief coaching.
Honoring those lost
The dinner begins with salads, Moscato and an assortment of red wines. Neumann suggests a toast to lost loved ones.
Maxeiner, of Frankfort, raises a glass to her son, Patrick. “His legacy took him to heaven just shy of his 25th birthday, while he was at the University of Michigan,” she said. “He died from an anaphylactic reaction. I toast him because of the way his death has brought so many people together. It’s been just amazing.”
Braxton, of Romeoville, toasts a friend’s grandmother who recently passed. “Her death inspired me to do this, to start looking into what we’re not talking about with family members. I was with her family at the bedside, watching them really struggle.”
Kunke, too, has watched many families struggle with the final chapter in a loved one’s life. “This is a discussion that needs to be had. Everyone needs to be open about it because there’s no getting around death. There’s no avoiding it.”
When it comes to grieving family members, Kunke said, she has seen the spectrum. Some families have everything in order. That, she said, enables them to simply relax and be with their loved one as he passes. Some, on the other hand, almost come to blows over end-of-life choices and even attempts to discuss those options.
Long, who is based in Downers Grove, has been present at almost 300 deaths, he said. The previous week, he attended five, all of different religious denominations.
“I deal with death and dying almost on a daily basis,” Long said. “I’m always talking about and bringing up the subject to individuals.”
But that doesn’t mean people are always receptive, he said. Often, the dying person talks to him in confidence and then the family does the same. “But what they need to do is talk to each other,” he said.
“My family’s had this discussion for many years. When my dad died (recently) we all knew what he wanted,” he said, toasting his father.
That said, Long added, “Still when my dad died, that was the hardest funeral I’ve done.”
With salads cleared and entrees delivered, talk meanders through three topics: preparing for death, dealing with death and recovering from the loss of a loved one.
The diners speculate on whether rules regarding death certificate attributions inadvertently link death, something that is inevitable, with disease, something that is considered “negative.”
Braxton said: “You can’t legally write natural causes on a death certificate, so the numbers are skewed. What strikes me is if the majority of people are dying of natural causes because we’re getting older, but doctors are forced to put something else on the certificate, we’re linking someone’s death with disease, even though it may simply have been that the person’s body gave out.”
An emotional subject
No matter that the diners are well versed in the subject, the end-of-life discussion still brings to the surface a range of emotions, from sorrow and fear to relief and even joy.
Bradley, of Matteson, wells up while explaining why she doesn’t attend funerals.
“I hate them. I don’t know why we have them,” she said. “I don’t know what the benefits are. You’re just exhausted. I don’t want to have a funeral. Once you’re gone, you’re gone. My celebration is while the person is here. I don’t go to funerals.”
Kunke, who lives in Shorewood, also talked about the value of life celebrations versus death rituals. After she learned her favorite aunt had been diagnosed with a fatal cancer, Kunke said, “We all went up to Wisconsin – a seven-hour drive — to see her. We had a party on the lake, with pizza and s’mores. It was just her sitting in a chair, celebrating us, me and my cousins all together, like we were when we were children.”
She said: “I knew when I hugged her, that was it, there wouldn’t be another chance. But as tiny as she was, her hug was as hard as it was when I was a little girl. So that’s the memory I will have of her. Instead of like my grandma who I picture in a fetal position, emaciated, weighing 90 pounds and dying.”
Neumann said when her dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she knew it meant death would come quickly. Before he was hospitalized, she asked him about his end-of-life wishes.
“My family was like, ‘Oh my God — no, he’ll die if we talk about this.’ This is why these conversations are so difficult. People are afraid,” she said.
Much the way a post-funeral luncheon gives way to light-hearted conversation, the arrival of steaming plates of chicken, mostaccioli and calamari seem to invite humor to the table.
Baader, of Tinley Park, regales the group with the Irish customs her grandparents practiced, from stopping in at a funeral simply because there were only a few cars in the parking lot to the daily perusal of the obituary page, which her grandmother called the Irish Racing Forum.
“I don’t exactly have a normal view of death maybe because my grandparents had a funeral home. They lived in Ireland and I would go and spend the summer there,” she said. “I just thought it was normal to talk about death. So my view is a little skewed.”
She recalled how when someone died in the small town, men would hoist the casket on their shoulders and walk to the church. Afterward, she said, there was always a celebration.
“That’s one thing about the Irish,” Baader said, “they always put a positive spin on everything.”
There were also poignant moments during the two-hour dinner, particularly when Michalik, of Homer Glen, talked about coming to terms with the loss of her then 4-year-old son Mark several years ago.
“People would see me in the grocery store and not know what to say, so they’d avoid me,” she said.
She said she hoped that by bringing the discussion into the open, more people will be able to find and give support during difficult times.
She also talked about the mystery of death, recalling her mother-in-law’s passing three years ago.
“She had health issues and died,” Michalik said. “My father-in-law was fine at the funeral, absolutely fine.”
But 2 1/2 months later, he checked into the hospital, she said.
“Doctors told him he was fine. His blood pressure was fine, he had no issues. But he passed that night,” she said. “After 72 years of marriage, when you lose your other half, what do you do?”
Coping skills
Neumann, who lives in Griffith, Ind., said, in her experience, “People in different religious orders see death and fear it differently. Sometimes it seems people without any spiritual ties, fear it more. They wonder, ‘What is after this?'”
Maxeiner said, some people go quietly into the night, while others leave this world kicking and screaming and still others are “celebrating and praising Jesus.”
Though only a few of the diners opted for dessert, all concluded the outing in agreement that the meal and the conversation should not end here, at this table.
“We need more of these kinds of dinners,” Neumann said.
As some had their leftovers wrapped and others drained their wine glasses, a question caused a pause in the activity: What, if anything, is truly helpful to a person who is grieving?
“Everyone brings food and I wonder, who’s really hungry, why all this food?” Bradley said. “I guess for some, they feel like they’re helping.”
Maxeiner said: “If you want to be helpful, just sit with me. Tell me ‘It’s OK to cry.'”
She said she doesn’t remember much about her son’s funeral, only the constant “push” to be in certain places and certain times.
But she does remember a friend saying to her, “It’s OK to cry. I am not afraid of your grief.”
That, she said, “has stuck with me always.”
@dvickroy
