By making healthy choices every day we can help ourselves to live well and to age well. Then, when the time comes, we are more likely to die well. If we can die well this will help those we love and are leaving behind to grieve well. After all natural death, dying, loss and grief are all normal life events for everyone. It’s just that we don’t like to talk about them.
Yet when we do choose to talk about them it helps us to plan ahead and to think about the choices we make while we are well enough to do so. That means that when we do become unwell there is less to think about. We can have peace of mind that our loved ones are already prepared and know what is most important to us.
Planning ahead and talking about what our wishes are, helps those we leave behind to have peace of mind too.
Being able to talk about the 100% chance that we will all die can help us to make better choices in the time we have left to live. These better choices can give us a fuller and richer life.
Later Life Planning
As you get older there is a chance that you may become lonely and/or socially isolated. This can be for many different reasons including, a lack of finances, disabilities which affect your mobility, lack of accessible transport, loss of work, motivation and loss of social connections. Click here to visit our Later Life Planning section.
In this video Dr Katherine Mannix talks about why we don’t need to avoid talking about death and dying anymore.
“Let’s Talk about Dying” a leaflet from Dying Matters helps us to know what we might talk about, how we might start to even have small conversations and tips on what we might think about saying.
