Lucie Rudd is a nurse specialising in oncology and palliative care for more than 20 years and is now an end of life care advisor at Macmillan. She chats to Mick about how wrapping your head around "normal dying" and doing some practical planning, such as writing a will or thinking about what you’d put on your bucket list, earlier rather than later can make it easier to prepare for the inevitable. And, as Lucie wisely notes, ‘Talking about dying will not make someone die.’ We’d do well to remember that and start the conversation.

We’ve teamed up with Macmillan again to go a bit more in-depth into the topics around death that we touched on at the panel event we did with them back in May. 

Our first Chops guest was the brilliant Poppy Mardall, founder and director of Poppy’s Funerals, a modern-day funeral company aiming to revolutionise the funeral trade, who was full of incredible insider knowledge that left me and Jen agog. In the second, Hannah and I spoke with Saima Thompson, restaurateur, writer and blogger, who just happens to be a stage 4 cancer patient, and she told us the ins and outs of living with a terminal prognosis and all that entails. And finally, our Jen spent some time with Nicky Diaz of Cruse Bereavement, talking about how grief can be the pits and what can be done to help ourselves or others keep heads above water.

Macmillan knows talking about death can be difficult but having honest conversations and taking small but simple steps, such as writing a will, can help you and your family prepare emotionally, practically and financially. Macmillan Cancer Support offer a will-writing service to help you take that first step in planning for the future, so you can get on with living life as fully as you can. Visit macmillan.org.uk today for information and support.

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