BEND, OR -- No one likes to talk about death, but it's a conversation that all of us should have with loved ones. Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Ellen Goodman will speak in Bend Thursday night, to help people get started with this difficult conversation.

Goodman started "The Conversation Project" several years ago. It's a downloadable "starter kit" to get the end of life conversation going. "We do say one of the most important reasons to have the conversation is so your wishes will be respected. So your children and different members of the family won't fight about what your care should be," Goodman tells KBND News.

She came up with the idea after she had to make a lot of health decisions for her mother at the end of her life. "My mother began a long, slow decline. My mother and I had talked about everything, except one thing: how she wanted to live at the end of her life. When she came to that time, I was faced with a cascading number of decisions for which I was wholly unprepared and, in fact, blindsided. She had dementia and she couldn't decide what she wanted to have for lunch, let alone what she wanted to have for healthcare."