DEATH, they say, is the only certainty in life.

As much as we all try to ignore it, death will come to us all eventually.

So it makes sense to give the same attention to our deaths as we do to the lives which precede it.

Many people associate hospices with death and, indeed, they generally come into play when people are diagnosed with a life-limiting condition.

But that is a wide spectrum from a matter of days to a number of years.

In fact, hospices are more about life than about death.

They are about making the most of life, of the time left.

And perhaps because of the situation the preciousness of life, and of loved ones, comes into sharp focus.

Ask people who use the hospice to use words to describe their experience and they do not speak of sadness.

Often as not they will use words such as love, support,kindness, even joy.

In life we try to plan our lives to make the most of them.

So why not give death the same attention?

Thanks to the hospice, patients can often make choices about their death, about how to die well, just as they lived well.

We can ask no more than that.

There is no doubt the north Essex community values the hospice and supports it through donations and volunteering.

But there is still a lot of ignorance and stigma surrounding the hospice movement. Hopefully, through raising awareness, we can give an idea of just what a wonderful place it is.