Caitlin Doughty

A thoughtful, bold, and heartfelt look at death, mortality, and existence, and how embracing and understanding these things brings us closer to living a fuller, happier, less fearful life, unburdened by ignorance or repression about grief or the deceased. Anecdotal and interesting, there were definitely some heavy parts- when the author has to shave a baby's head before cremation, for example. None of these stories were provided for sheer shock value, though- they all provide insight into show more the multiple ways we fear, embrace, and avoid death, as compared to the reality behind it all. It's also worth mentioning that while lighthearted at times, this book isn't overly comedic or brash, and that its core message- that ignoring death and fatality only adds to our fear and terror towards it- has never been truer. Leagues better than Mary Roach's unfunny, cheesy, rambling bore of a book, Stiff. show less

I first heard Caitlin Doughty speak on an episode of Duncan Trussell's podcast and I was hooked. Her philosophy of embracing our mortality rather than fearing or being willfully ignorant of it is inspiring and has made me rethink my own stance on the matter.

Par for the course, the western world has capitalized on the death and funeral industries and it has shaped the dealing with corpses into a distant, medical procedure. We do everything in our power to distract ourselves from it, cover it show more up, etc. But, as Caitlin goes on to say, life has meaning because of death.

Listening to this audiobook, I swung from existential dread to wonder to acceptance and back. Now I want to make my own funeral arrangements!

5/5, eye-opening (pun intended) and highly recommended! I look forward to reading her other books. show less

Funeral home owner Doughty skips around the world, observing the rituals that surround death if different cultures: in Indonesia, Spain, Bolivia, Mexico, Japan, and a few locations in the U.S. where people are trying something different than the norm (funeral pyres, composting bodies, natural burial, as opposed to burial or cremation). Doughty believes that the American discomfort with death can change through meaningful ritual and important conversations with family, but the culture and the show more industry (which is mainly to sell coffins) must change as well. Doughty's lighthearted and somewhat irreverent tone is reminiscent of Sarah Vowell's history/travelogues, and her subject is relevant to everyone. ("We are all going...")

See also: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande; anything by Sarah Vowell; Stiff by Mary Roach

Quotes

One of the chief questions in my work has always been why my own culture is so squeamish around death. Why do we refuse to have these conversations....? Our avoidance is self-defeating. (6)

Torajan and American death culture share this particular trait of overexpenditure; no one wants to be perceived as disrespecting the dead. (54)

The funeral system in the United States is notorious for passing laws and regulations interfering with diverse death practices and enforcing assimilation toward Americanized norms. (85)

The Western funeral home loves the word "dignity." ...What dignity translates to, more often than not, is silence, a forced poise, a rigid formality. (102)

Not only do the young have zero death literacy, they don't seem to mind. (Japan, 167)

History is filled with ideas that arrived before their time. (179)

...women...were using their comfort with death to seize direct access to the divine from the hands of the male leaders of the Catholic Church. (Bolivia, 211)

Death avoidance is not an individual failing; it is a cultural one. (232)

[Meaningful tasks and] a sense of purpose [help] the mourner grieve. Grieving helps the mourner begin to heal. (235) show less

As someone who has lost their fair share of friends and family members, as well as pets, almost exclusively to cancer, I’ve never really come to terms with how we, in the US, process death. A friend, who is currently going to school to be a mortician/funeral director, introduced me to Caitlin Doughty, an L. A. based mortician and founder of the Order of the Good Death, a nonprofit organization that focuses on helping people come to terms with their mortality and make decisions regarding show more the care and keeping of their body after they die.

These facts, when the book club picked it, made me a bit wary – I’m still not entirely at peace with my grandmother’s passing in the fall. I don’t like to talk about death. I don’t like to talk about dead bodies. I have difficulty with viewings and other death-related occasions. But, with an open mind, I started reading, with the hope that Caitlin would help me develop a better relationship one of the only facts about our lives on earth – they will end.

My husband often says he wants a Viking funeral, or a Tibetan Sky Burial, and each time he brings it up, I ask him to stop. I can’t stomach it. But Caitlin has gone all over the world, and her own country, exploring different cultures’ death rituals. And maybe it’s her writing, maybe it’s the distance, but it is absolutely fascinating! I really could not put From Here to Eternity – the travel aspect also helped me stomach the content. And at times, I cried, but for good reasons – Caitlin expertly goes back and forth between being detached and un-emotional, to feeling all the things when listening to her coworker recount the circumstances of the loss of her unborn son.

People die all the time, and she also goes into why cremation has become such a large part of the modern funeral industry, as well as the monopolies, corruption, and out-of-date laws that govern the industry in the US. To say I learned something would be a massive understatement. I was freaked out significantly less than I anticipated being while reading Packing for Mars last month. show less