The events are being organised by Hospice South Canterbury as part of National Hospice Awareness Week.
Hospice South Canterbury marketing and events manager Kim Rogers said they wanted to use the month as a way to educate people.
"Nationally, they have it to raise money, but we’ve just had the rock and hop, so we don’t feel comfortable asking people to give us more money after that.
"We want to use it to teach people about hospice and maybe some of the things that — if you yourself have a terminal illness or something like a life-limiting illness — you actually need to know or do.
"It’s only really gone from being a week to what we call a month, because our hospice cottage where we hold the events currently is very busy and we’re just having to work around spaces that work. So we just decided we’d stretch it out for the whole month."
She said the theme for this year was "getting your ducks in a row".
"NASC [needs, assessment, service co-ordination] and some rest-home representatives will be coming in to talk as part of a panel discussion.
"We are having Robert Vincent [RSM Law] come along again. He’s done it for a few years now and he’ll be talking about wills and powers of attorney.
"[Age Concern South Canterbury manager] Chris Thomas is coming along this year as well to talk about banking and joint bank accounts and how to make that easier if one partner is unwell or no longer here.
"For the first time last year we invited a panel of funeral directors to give people the chance to ask questions they always wanted to ask, and we had some really good discussion. So, we are doing that again but we’ve only got two representatives from the companies this year."
Ms Rogers said they would be joined by Timaru death doula Jade Whaley to discuss what she does, and there would also be the Burning of the Cards ceremony from the Farmers’ Tree of Remembrance.
"We pick those up, and we burn them at this little wee service that we have. It’s kind of lovely."
She said she felt it was important for people to learn a lot of this information before it was too late.
"Nine times out of 10 people don’t want to know about it until they actually need it.
"It’s making them aware that they’ve got to think about it and put the steps in place. You don’t want to think about dying because you’re fit and healthy and some people who are unwell don’t want to think about it either.
"It’s my own personal opinion that, nationally, we need to start talking about [dying] a lot more than we do."
While the events were free to attend, Ms Rogers said the cottage could only hold a limited number of people, so it was appreciated if people contacted Hospice South Canterbury to register their interest in attending.
"If we have say 50 people that want to come we would just need to know so we could move it and find somewhere else to hold it."
She said there were plenty of ways people could support Hospice South Canterbury year round.
"We have 109 members in our virtual coffee club and it’s really cool because all these people have coffee with us once a week. They make a regular donation from $5 and upwards. That goes directly to patients and families. We’d love more people to belong to that.
"We also run a ‘raise a calf for hospice’ programme — we have farmers raise the calf from birth and then we pick it up and take it out to grazers. That’s another great way we get support because certainly illness affects not just people that live in town, but people that live in the country too.
"We’re always looking for more volunteers to help run our shops or cook meals, but basically if people want to support us they can always give us a call."
