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A review by bittersweet_symphony
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
4.0
In Doughty I find a kindred spirit, an advocate of death as a mighty vehicle for mining meaning in life. She is darkly humorous, playful, profound, and involved in a gravely important work.
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is part memoir of a twenty-something crematory worker, part history of the death industry in the US, and part clarion call for us to no longer shield ourselves from the reality of death. As Doughty says, "We can do our best to push death to the margins, keeping corpses behind stainless-steel doors and tucking the sick and dying in hospital rooms. So masterfully do we hid death, you would almost believe we are the first generation of immortals...The fear of death is why we build cathedrals, have children, declare war, and watch cat videos online at three a.m. Death drives every creative and destructive impulse we have as human beings. The closer we come to understanding it, the closer we come to understanding ourselves."
Doughty juxtaposes upbeat humor with heavy reality. Criticizing streamlined corporate-style funerals she jests, "These modern denial strategies help focus mourners on positive 'celebrations of life'—life being far more marketable than death. One of the largest funeral-home corporations keeps small toaster ovens near their arrangement rooms so fresh-baked cookie smells will comfort and distract families throughout the day—fingers crossed that the chocolate chips mask the olfactory undertones of chemicals and decomposition."
She peels back the curtain, revealing what death work looks like, the stuff most of us refuse to think about. She talks of coming home with specks of dust behind her ears, the residue of human ash that has floated from the cremating machine. She laughs about having to stack corpses in a van, like a game of Jenga, as she goes on routine body pickups, later crying as the observes the emotions apparent on the faces of people in their most raw moments.
A short ride and easy read, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes puts death in your mind, with hopes of getting Americans to reject our head-in-the-sand approach to our mortality. This book offers a solid introduction to her expanding work with The Order of the Good Death and the Death Salon—all efforts to help us live better by dying better.
There are 7 reasons humans fear dying, according to a 1961 paper in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology .
1) My death would cause grief to my relatives and friends
2) All my plans and projects would come to an end
3) The process of dying might be painful
4) I could no longer have any experiences
5) I would no longer be able to care for my dependents
6) I am afraid of what might happen to me if there is a life after death
7) I am afraid of what might happen to my body after death
As a child, I was touched by the deaths of a few loved ones, and have since been fascinated by the reasons we give for fearing death. Some of us are so terrified by death that we want to eradicate it altogether. That seems like cowardice to me, reflecting an inability to come to peace with living, a hyper-focus on the future rather than an eagerness to immerse ourselves in the present. I'm all for biotech advancements and the lengthening of life, but I fall more comfortably in the camp that prefers quality of life over quantity of life.
Reflecting regularly on our own mortality injects a vitality into our lives, enriching the quality of existence (which indirectly can extend the quantity as well).
Doughty reminds us that "Death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka puts 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...The great achievements of humanity were born out of the deadlines imposed by death."
Death destroys us, but the idea of death saves us.
Watch for a more in-depth review as an upcoming essay at Erraticus.
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is part memoir of a twenty-something crematory worker, part history of the death industry in the US, and part clarion call for us to no longer shield ourselves from the reality of death. As Doughty says, "We can do our best to push death to the margins, keeping corpses behind stainless-steel doors and tucking the sick and dying in hospital rooms. So masterfully do we hid death, you would almost believe we are the first generation of immortals...The fear of death is why we build cathedrals, have children, declare war, and watch cat videos online at three a.m. Death drives every creative and destructive impulse we have as human beings. The closer we come to understanding it, the closer we come to understanding ourselves."
Doughty juxtaposes upbeat humor with heavy reality. Criticizing streamlined corporate-style funerals she jests, "These modern denial strategies help focus mourners on positive 'celebrations of life'—life being far more marketable than death. One of the largest funeral-home corporations keeps small toaster ovens near their arrangement rooms so fresh-baked cookie smells will comfort and distract families throughout the day—fingers crossed that the chocolate chips mask the olfactory undertones of chemicals and decomposition."
She peels back the curtain, revealing what death work looks like, the stuff most of us refuse to think about. She talks of coming home with specks of dust behind her ears, the residue of human ash that has floated from the cremating machine. She laughs about having to stack corpses in a van, like a game of Jenga, as she goes on routine body pickups, later crying as the observes the emotions apparent on the faces of people in their most raw moments.
A short ride and easy read, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes puts death in your mind, with hopes of getting Americans to reject our head-in-the-sand approach to our mortality. This book offers a solid introduction to her expanding work with The Order of the Good Death and the Death Salon—all efforts to help us live better by dying better.
There are 7 reasons humans fear dying, according to a 1961 paper in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology .
1) My death would cause grief to my relatives and friends
2) All my plans and projects would come to an end
3) The process of dying might be painful
4) I could no longer have any experiences
5) I would no longer be able to care for my dependents
6) I am afraid of what might happen to me if there is a life after death
7) I am afraid of what might happen to my body after death
As a child, I was touched by the deaths of a few loved ones, and have since been fascinated by the reasons we give for fearing death. Some of us are so terrified by death that we want to eradicate it altogether. That seems like cowardice to me, reflecting an inability to come to peace with living, a hyper-focus on the future rather than an eagerness to immerse ourselves in the present. I'm all for biotech advancements and the lengthening of life, but I fall more comfortably in the camp that prefers quality of life over quantity of life.
Reflecting regularly on our own mortality injects a vitality into our lives, enriching the quality of existence (which indirectly can extend the quantity as well).
Doughty reminds us that "Death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka puts 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...The great achievements of humanity were born out of the deadlines imposed by death."
Death destroys us, but the idea of death saves us.
Watch for a more in-depth review as an upcoming essay at Erraticus.