The state’s oldest charitable organization and one of its newest have teamed up to offer a new community-centered gathering designed to foster compassionate conversations about end-of-life care, grief and death.
Telling the Bees Fest: a Chicagoland Deathcare Education & Resource Festival is a joint effort of Wally’s Hearth, which became a 501(c)(3) about two years ago, and Caledonia Senior Living & Memory Care, which is supported by the Chicago Scots, founded as the Illinois St. Andrew Society in 1845.
The festival’s name harkens back to a folk custom well-known in the Celtic and British Isles traditions in which families share important news with household bees.
“I’m a self-proclaimed crunchy granola. I grew up in the forest. Everything goes back to nature,” said Tiffany Johnson, co-founder and executive director of Wally’s Hearth. She explained that Wally’s Hearth co-founder Lydia Manning has some Southern heritage, and Scottish immigrants to the South would set up beehives.
“They were setting up homes and might have to move, but they took the hives with them,” sharing news about births, and deaths, she explained. “I think it’s really powerful and a connecting piece and symbolic.”
“Tiffany said telling the bees means that nobody really goes through the big moments alone. We’re all connected,” shared Gus Noble, president of Caledonia Senior Living and Chicago Scots. “The bees are the people around us and nature. We’re really connected in important ways.”
Noble added that the care facility, which has been in North Riverside since 1910, originally raised livestock and once had bee hives. “We should bring them back,” he mused.
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The festival takes place 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 12 on the grounds and inside Caledonia Senior Living, 2800 Des Plaines Avenue in North Riverside. It’s open to the public, and volunteers, sponsors and the public can contact [email protected] to register.
Chicago Scots promotes Scottish culture and “is informative of the style of care” at Caledonia Senior Living, Noble said. “We care for seniors and nourish Scottish identity.”
Wally’s Heart, based in Chicago’s west suburbs, is “the first of this kind of model in the whole state, a social model hospice home. The simplest way to describe it is a nonmedical last care facility,” Johnson said. “People come into our home as a guest, resident, knowing that their journey is at the end to alleviate the burden on family members and caregivers and at no cost to the individual to stay with us. … This isn’t a new model. It has been practiced around the world but hasn’t opened up in Illinois yet.”
The two organizations decided to join forces for the festival after Wally’s Hearth explored opening its first home at Caledonia Senior Living by converting some rooms for that purpose. “There were some more immediate and challenging circumstances with licenses and architecture,” Noble said. ‘There was some alignment on values. Just because there’s no physical space doesn’t mean that (both) can’t serve a need.”
Over the course of their discussion, Noble and Johnson realized people weren’t planning for the end of their lives either for themselves or a loved one.
“What happens in the absence of that is strife. The original mission of Scots was to alleviate that,” Noble said. “The reasons the conversations aren’t happening is because they’re delayed because they don’t know the options. Tiffany has some experience bringing people together who are in need of answers and education about options and resources. This is where the organizations came together in a unique, exciting and inspirational way.”
The festival aims to bridge that gap of knowledge by connecting providers for aging populations for end-of-life and after-life arrangements and community residents who need that information while not in the midst of trauma or grief.
“These networking groups we know are a combination of home care providers, medical and nonmedical, funeral care, body disposition. What do you want done? Donation to science, water cremation, green burial – these things are less traditional. We want to have those resources in place so people can learn about them,” Johnson said.
“We have a florist who understands native plant life and how to incorporate nature in the experience and bring ritual and tradition into the experience,” she added. “We have industrialized a lot of the process. This is about all the rest.”
They expect that not all conversations will be about death and the end of life “but helping people to live more fully in the present or through the loss of a loved one. How can we help families create a legacy that is who their loved one was?” Noble shared.
“Tiffany had talked about one writer who helped people reaching the end of their life help write notes to their loved ones to deliver at various points. We have a focus not just on the people who are going through this and their families but the youngest members – how to talk to children about grief that is age-specific. So we’ll have resources for families.”
They also hope the festival brings in multiple generations. “We used to live in multigenerational homes not that long ago,” Johnson said. “So I think it’s remembering how we show up and care for each other.”
In addition to short presentations, food and music will be part of the event, including the Threshold Choir, an international choir that has a group based in Chicago’s suburbs. “They’ll come sing bedside to people with a terminal illness,” Johnson said, adding that about a dozen signers have agreed to provide an example of their service. “We’ll set up a chair or recliner so (listeners) can sit and experience what that’s like.”
And it wouldn’t be a Scottish home event without bagpipes, Noble said, with many residents or their families requesting the honor of a bagpiper to the memorial instead of flowers to play a special tune. “Amazing Grace” is particularly popular.
“Our go-to piper plays really small pipes that are really gentle,” he added. “We also have the choir and a flautist who will perform Native American tunes used in the funerals in that culture. We’re really going to think in a culturally specific way about things that might have a place in other cultures and link them to other cultures.”
Because it’s the first festival, although they hope it will become an annual event, Noble said there’s an “element of exploration” involved, given physical space restraints and parking limitations, but ideally they hope to have between 150 and 350 people attend the event, which will be spread out on the facility’s five-acre campus.
Tents will be placed near trees given the anticipated emotions the festival might bring up. “We want to have spaces of retreat and quiet and places to have quiet and ask questions,” Johnson said, adding that six to 10 speakers will talk for 10 to 15 minutes about their experiences from whole body donation to science to green burial options. Lawyers and representations from funeral homes and hospice also will be on hand.
“We should know the difference between hospice and palliative care,” Noble said, giving an example of information that might be new to attendees. “It affects decisions they could make. If you don’t make decisions today for tomorrow, you could be in trouble. We’re trying to help families be creative.”
The event is free, although donations will be accepted that will go to both of the organizations or perhaps to future festivals. “I think we owe it to the communities we’re supporting to make this more than a one-off,” Noble said.
Noble, whose father died three-and-a-half years ago, knows the importance of having a plan and the “angst” that can come from lacking direction. “I know my dad. He had fun thinking about it,” he said. His father planned everything for his funeral from songs to be performed to where his ashes would be scattered and the food served.
“It gave me the sense that my father, beyond his death, was telling me what to do but also to feel less stress about the situation,” he shared. “I want to help our community break down the stigma of thinking about talking about death and end of life and free people up to be more creative with their own end.”
Johnson will measure its success by having attendees “walk away with a sense of peace and almost anticipation. They have a to-do list for themselves,” she said, whether it’s coming up with their own plan or feeling better about talking to their families.
“The telling to the bees – that whole folktale behind it – is about coming together as a community and sharing, telling the beehive about loss and telling those stories. That’s why I wanted to have that framing in someone’s mind,” she shared. “There’s room for expressing more love for one another whey they feel safe enough, so I’m hoping this festival is a gateway for those conversations. I think this will be really beautiful.”
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Melinda Moore is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.