I read this book in a single day, which should tell you something. No, the book wasn’t two pages long.
I chanced upon a YouTube channel called Ask A Mortician and found her not only informative on all things death related, but also funny and charming. Caitlin Doughty seemed like someone I’d want to hang around with.
This in turn led me to her book Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (And Other Lessons From The Crematory). I expected and enjoyed the anecdotes of working with corpses and the awkwardness of experiencing another culture’s grieving rituals for the first time (the segment on the Chinese family is fascinating).
The horror from outsiders, too, wasn’t a surprise, such as a hospital security guard’s distaste at her picking up ex-babies, that “it didn’t matter how many times I smiled at her, expressed my new-on-the-job status with bumbling Hugh Grant– esque apologies. This woman had decided that I was dirty and deviant. Handmaiden to the underworld.”
I also anticipated moments that made me laugh out loud, such as when “the family had placed a Häagen-Dazs coffee-and-almond ice-cream bar between her hands like a Viking warrior’s weapon. Those are my favourite. So I yelled, involuntarily, “Those are my favourite!””
What I didn’t expect were the many literary quotes and philosophical thoughts. Not that I didn’t think mortuary workers were capable of them, but I didn’t expect to be thinking about them so much afterwards. Caitlin believes the West’s relationship with death has gone astray, that “death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka said , “The meaning of life is that it ends.” Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create.”
She feels that hiding death away and pretending it doesn’t happen is creating greater fear of the inevitable end. She advocates for a more natural, eco-friendly approach, and for not allowing funeral homes to dictate to the family how the final proceedings should go. I’ll let her explain it in this Ted Talk:
She also believes (more in America, not so much here) that embalming is often sold to people as the only way and is expensive and often unnecessary:
At first I thought, well, is it really so important to be more involved with a body before a funeral? How much can that really change things? Then I thought hard on her point that we also hide old age, stashing the elderly and infirm in sometimes substandard homes, while other cultures move ageing relatives in with them to deal with the consequences of the years together. I wonder if maybe she’s right. What do all of you think?
Caitlin also began The Order of the Good Death, where “funeral industry professionals, academics, and artists explor(e) ways to prepare a death phobic culture for their inevitable mortality.” I’d like to go to one of their talks one day. I’ve also pre-ordered her book From Here To Eternity, in which she travelled far and wide gathering information on the death practices of various civilisations.
As an added bonus, here are a few fun videos from her Ask A Mortician series:
Crematory Scandal That Changed The Death Industry
Victorian STANDING Corpse Photography?
The Punished Suicide
The Self Mummified Monks
Medieval Zombies?!
La Pascualita: Mannequin or Corpse Bride?
Lead Based Make Up Tutorial For Spring
Genuinely fascinating! I think I’ll pick her book up in my next Amazon spree, you/she has intrigued me greatly.
Yay! I thoroughly recommend it, looking forward to her next one. The video series is great too, the more you watch the more you enjoy them
They are quite addictive, aren’t they? I subscribed to her channel, the weird side of Youtube is the one I enjoy finding myself lost in the most. Just watching the “Painting with Human Remains” one right now.
Very addictive! I love finding weird YouTube channels too
Love this post! I’m laughing my head off at that lead makeup tutorial. I am so happy to meet people with a sense of humour. How refreshing. “Remember, you will die.” xo
I read the first paragraph in your voice lol. That medival zombies vid was boss
Ha yay! That means my voice is memorable. Yeah she’s fascinating
I absolutely love this woman; my cousin is a Mortician and introduced me to her several years back, and she’s just the greatest!
She’s fantastic, her books and videos are so interesting
They really, really are. Between her and my cousin, I’ve learned an incredible amount about death in general- and the funeral industry. It’s so refreshing to have people like her who are willing to speak out on such a taboo cultural subject in such an important way.
I didn’t expect to come away from her book having such a massive rethink about everything, but it really got my brain going. I’d love to go to an Order of the Good Death talk
I would too. It would be so wonderful.