The theme will be 'Are We Ready?' Dying Matters Week, which runs from 13 to 19 May, is part of a national campaign, run by Dying Matters. It aims to help people talk more openly about dying, death and bereavement, and encourage people to make plans for the end of life. For the last couple of years, Dying Matters Awareness Week has challenged us all to answer a question: What Can You Do?. How can we help ourselves, or families and our communities face up to death and bereavement? For 2019, we will ask another question: Are We Ready? It’s a question that challenges each of us on several levels. Are We Ready for our own deaths, or the deaths of those we care about? This is a practical question – wills, funeral planning and more – but of course it’s also emotional, even spiritual for some of us. For many of us, the answer will not be ‘yes’. We know from research that most people haven’t taken care of the practical aspects, which include deciding on organ donation, and planning our future care. And even for those that have, the emotional aspect of being ready for death is challenging. Who is ever really ready to die? We can only know the answer if we start to have the conversation, and as we’ve said before, talking about it won’t make it happen. And those conversations don’t stop in our private lives – they have to form a part of the public debate as well. Are We Ready to volunteer at a local hospice? Are We Ready to support a bereavement charity? Are We Ready to do what we can in our communities to help people be ready?