​Tying Up Loose Ends takes us on a powerful, uplifting, and downright funny journey into what occurs on a human level at the end of our lives. This compassionate performance of patients’ stories and needs is coupled with beautifully crafted songs. Together, they create a unique layer of familiarity and sensitivity to powerful tales that are steeped in family relationships. Tying Up Loose Ends is a play that finds humor in any situation while delivering a dramatic, and humane performance.

Catherine Gallogly wrote Tying Up Loose Ends based on thirty years of working as a nurse, the last thirteen in hospice and palliative care. This experience, combined with her natural storytelling and ability to find humor in any situation, allows an insight that very few possess. She performs alongside her daughter, Ann Gallogly, who is an accomplished singer. As someone who knew the patients first-hand, Catherine says one of her most important goals with the show is “to faithfully honor the people whose stories I share.”
 

This mother-daughter combination performs in theaters, religious institutions, nursing school classrooms, house concerts, hotel ballrooms, and at conferences. At its 2008 debut, Tying Up Loose Ends opened to sold-out performances at Village Players Theater in Oak Park and went on to runs at Chicago Center for the Performing Arts and Theater Building Chicago (now Stage 773). The duo has been hired to perform for Chicago IONS, Hektoen Institute, Seasons Hospice, McNeal Hospital, Marian College School of Nursing, American Organization of Nurse Educators, Illinois Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and numerous others.
 

Tying Up Loose Ends is a Breathe Life Production and was developed closely with Jamie O’Reilly, the award-winning Chicago performer and producer, and with Dan Stetzel, noted cabaret pianist and member of the musical theater department at Roosevelt University.