A CHALLENGE tree was unveiled during this year’s Death Cafe organised to celebrate Dying Matters week.

Airedale Hospital staff hosted the cafe to encourage people discuss the often-difficult subject of death and dying.

They unveiled a ‘Make One Change’ challenge tree, which suggested people think what they wanted to do for an end-of-life event that might affect them, their family or their community.

Customers were able to find out how to plan the end of life, by visiting stands from Cruse Bereavement Care, Cancer Support, Sue Ryder, Carers Resource, Walker Foster solicitors and Brook Smith and Son funeral directors.

Staff also questioned visitors to the cafe, such as: “If you knew this was your last day of life what would you do?”, “How would you like to be remembered?” and “Do you know what your loved ones would want at their funeral?”

The death cafe was a safe, non-judgemental environment, said Fiona Widdowson, End of Life Care Facilitator in the Palliative Care Team at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust.

She said: “I’ve had one person who wanted to talk about a friend who has just died, which in itself is very sad, but actually they want to talk about it because it was a brilliant celebration.

“They didn’t want a traditional funeral so the family took the ashes on to Pen-y-ghent and had a great time remembering that person.

“So it’s a way of people being able to share really positive experiences around death which then inspire other people to think how would they would like things to be done.”

Fiona said it was important to start the difficult conversations.

She said: “It’s getting people to ask questions that they wouldn’t necessarily bring up at Sunday lunch, but which are in fact intimate to that family, their experience of being in a family, like Christmas or other celebrations.”

Visit dyingmatters.org for advice or information on how to start conversations.