Busselton Hospice Care encouraging adults to take action this Dying to Know Day

Busselton Hospice Care is encouraging adults of all ages to take action and improve their knowledge around choices for their end of life this Dying to Know Day. Dying to Know Day is an annual campaign in Australia, that empowers adults to be strong self-advocates for their own personal planning when it comes to their future. “It’s dedicated to increasing everyone’s knowledge of why it’s important to prepare for death, what to do to make things easier for people and for families,” said Busselton Hospice Care Chief Executive Officer James Jarvis. “That might be things like writing a will, or advanced care planning or recording of your funeral wishes.” Mr Jarvis said that many people choose to not talk about the thought of death or dying. “Research says that 27 per cent of Australians don’t want to talk about death at all, like it’s not even something that they want to contemplate,” he said. “But then there’s a big proportion of people that know that it’s there and they’d be prepared to have a conversation about it if they you know, if they just had the right mechanism to do that.” For the first time the Hospice is hosting a death cafe, which is a safe space to talk about death, dying and grief, over sweet treats and warm beverages. “It’s a specialised form of conversation cafe, there’s no promoting of anybody, it’s just for anybody who’s got an interest in dying and living well,” said Mr Jarvis. “Claire O’Berry is the host who is a local End of Life doula and is experienced in death cafe’s and so basically she holds a safe space where people can have some real talk about dying, death, grief, bereavement, all the questions that they might have wanted to talk about.” Mr Jarvis said the Hospice eventually want to turn the death cafe into a regular series of events to raise awareness and to get people talking before it might be too late. The event will be held on Dying to Know Day on August 8 at the Good Egg Cafe in Busselton at 2pm. No booking is required.