North Essex communities encouraged to open up about death
St Helena Hospice is promoting ways to support each other during difficult times this week
It's Dying Matters Awareness Week and St Helena Hospice is encouraging communities to open up about death, dying and bereavement.
The charity has teamed up with St Elizabeth Hospice in Colchester and St Nicholas Hospice in Bury St Edmunds to teach people how to support each other.
As part of the awareness week running until Sunday 16 May, all three charities are holding over 30 virtual and in-person events covering topics including ‘Care and loss during COVID - How do we Heal?’, ‘Compassionate Halesworth Tributes to honour and remember at the Pear Tree Centre in Halesworth’ and ‘Care and loss during COVID - Palliative Care Nursing Q&A’.
It's all part of Compassionate Communities, which is a national approach to offer resources and guidance to help people speak about death, dying and bereavement.
Greg Cooper, Compassionate Communities Lead Project Manager at St Elizabeth Hospice, said:
"Throughout the last year we have all faced challenges as a result of Covid-19, but it has been clear that small acts of kindness and friendship can make a big difference to people’s lives, especially if they are experiencing a difficult time in their life through bereavement or grief.
"Open conversations and listening to one another is at the heart of Compassionate Communities and we hope communities throughout the region will join with us in starting these conversations, sharing their stories and ensuring nobody is left feeling isolated."
The ability to open up about the 'taboo' topics is known to help people's mental health, which Dan Wilson-Brown experienced himself.
After losing his grandparents and others close to him in a short period of time, he struggled to find the opportunity to speak about it, which later deteriorated his mental wellbeing.
Eventually he sought counselling, which the on-call firefighter said really helped:
"Once you've spoken it out loud, your lips have moved and you've processed it, it just helps. It, kind of, goes away in your brain and gets filed away. Conversation is really powerful.
"Talking about memories and sharing memories helped. If there was any grudges with them people, if there was anything that happened in the past that you might have been mulling over, my lovely counsellor helped let go of that and helped me forget about it through various different techniques.
"Certainly sharing memories and reliving memories helped."
Dan has since launched Run Talk Run in the East Anglian Region, which combines talking and exercise to improve people's mental health.
Rob Dunger lost his 102-year-old mother, Winnie, early this year, who he said had been planning for her own death for around 10 years.
He thinks this helped him accept her passing, but also encouraged him to plan his future.
Mr Dunger said:
"I've done my will, I've sorted a living will, I've got everything sorted for when I go. It's discussions like that we need to have. The more we talk about it and the more we talk to people in our work place, our family, make sure they know what we want and what they want, the best it will be.
"It's best just to talk about bereavement and get it out of your system. Have a bit of a cry, have a bit of a laugh, have a bit of a chuckle because the memories are brilliant. If it was good during their life, it's going to hurt afterwards. You have to work through that pain, you never get over it but you do get through it."
You can find out more about events being held during Dying Matters Awareness Week on the Compassionate Communities website.