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strangeclippings 's review for:
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
by Caitlin Doughty
[Full Disclosure: The author and I are best friends and plan to be in each other's weddings (I'm assuming) because one time I sent her an email and she replied personally!]
I was going to start off by warning you that this book is not for the squeamish-at-heart but then I realized that, since Doughty's whole mission is to convince us that we need to conquer this societal squeamishness surrounding death and decay, it's really all you wimps who need to read it most.
It's no big secret that America is in death denial. When was the last time any of us saw a dead body, much less a corpse that hasn't been given a major makeover with embalming fluids, eyeball spikes (EYEBALL SPIKES!), and stage makeup? Other cultures, and in fact our own culture up until the last century or so, tend to approach death more honestly, with rituals that provide true closure. They wash the bodies, dress the bodies, keep the body in their homes -- even in some case consume the bodies.
Doughty is not encouraging us to eat our deceased here, but she does urge us to break from the mainstream funeral industry and try for what she terms a "Good Death": one that we have prepared for well in advance, having been honest and direct about the fact that, yes, it's comin' for us. It's going to happen, so don't be caught unawares like the woman Doughty writes about in one anecdote who, while signing the cremation papers, cried, "It just came out of the blue! Mom had only been in hospice care for 6 months!"
What exactly Doughty wants us to do to participate in this death revolution is a little vague, but I gave this 5 stars anyways because I feel like the topic is so important, and so often ignored. We are afraid of death and our natural inclination is to ignore it, frantically filling our lives with love and sex and art in an attempt to forget about it or cheat it, but this approach only hurts us. Thinking about death prepares us for it, and it frees us to live more fully while we are still living, and it helps us process our mourning in a healthier way. Read more about Doughty's mission by Googling "The Order of the Good Death" or watching some of her hilarious webseries, "Ask a Mortician."
I highly recommend this one, and not just because Doughty and I are like *this.*
[A real disclaimer, despite the fact that we are all completely okay with death now and revel in decay: Don't necessarily read this book while you're eating oatmeal, as I did, because Doughty does not believe in mincing words. If she's retelling an incident in which a corpse showed up at her crematorium with green mold and its skin falling off and an eyeball popped out, she'll describe it in stomach-turning detail. Did you know some of us will turn ORANGE when we die?!]
I was going to start off by warning you that this book is not for the squeamish-at-heart but then I realized that, since Doughty's whole mission is to convince us that we need to conquer this societal squeamishness surrounding death and decay, it's really all you wimps who need to read it most.
It's no big secret that America is in death denial. When was the last time any of us saw a dead body, much less a corpse that hasn't been given a major makeover with embalming fluids, eyeball spikes (EYEBALL SPIKES!), and stage makeup? Other cultures, and in fact our own culture up until the last century or so, tend to approach death more honestly, with rituals that provide true closure. They wash the bodies, dress the bodies, keep the body in their homes -- even in some case consume the bodies.
Doughty is not encouraging us to eat our deceased here, but she does urge us to break from the mainstream funeral industry and try for what she terms a "Good Death": one that we have prepared for well in advance, having been honest and direct about the fact that, yes, it's comin' for us. It's going to happen, so don't be caught unawares like the woman Doughty writes about in one anecdote who, while signing the cremation papers, cried, "It just came out of the blue! Mom had only been in hospice care for 6 months!"
What exactly Doughty wants us to do to participate in this death revolution is a little vague, but I gave this 5 stars anyways because I feel like the topic is so important, and so often ignored. We are afraid of death and our natural inclination is to ignore it, frantically filling our lives with love and sex and art in an attempt to forget about it or cheat it, but this approach only hurts us. Thinking about death prepares us for it, and it frees us to live more fully while we are still living, and it helps us process our mourning in a healthier way. Read more about Doughty's mission by Googling "The Order of the Good Death" or watching some of her hilarious webseries, "Ask a Mortician."
I highly recommend this one, and not just because Doughty and I are like *this.*
[A real disclaimer, despite the fact that we are all completely okay with death now and revel in decay: Don't necessarily read this book while you're eating oatmeal, as I did, because Doughty does not believe in mincing words. If she's retelling an incident in which a corpse showed up at her crematorium with green mold and its skin falling off and an eyeball popped out, she'll describe it in stomach-turning detail. Did you know some of us will turn ORANGE when we die?!]