Book 20 of 2023
Summary
With her experience in the death and funeral business Caitlin Doughty brings us life advice and insight from the crematory. You wouldn’t think that you could receive life advice to live from the place where it ends but Caitlin proves you wrong. With humour, honesty, and personal experience the reader will find the curtain over the death industry lifted. The scene isn’t the macabre that we instinctively fear. We live in a society that hides death away from our eyes constantly. From the way we are pushed through the death experience of a friend or loved one in a hurried manner to the way we pretend that we are not afraid of death when all the signs are there that we are. Or how funerals and the planning for them is like a race we never wanted to be in or really attend. Or how our death rituals are fading quickly and most families do not even have one at all anymore where as in the not so distant past death was something to be embraced and experienced fully before shedding the grief and moving on. While addressing and sharing her experiences in the death industry Caitlin causes the reader to reflect on their own experiences with death and how they could have been different or what was going on behind the scenes. She encourages us to think about our own death rituals (or to create them) explaining how important they are. There is no escaping death. All the time we spend avoiding it adds to the mystery that allows us to be robbed of the experience of death but also allows us to pay whatever the price to get it over with. Wasting so much time on avoiding death robs us of the opportunity to truly live and plan our own death while we are living.
Thoughts and Review
I would highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to embark on their own exploration of the death industry or to unpack the death experience. It was revealing to discover just what goes on behind the closed doors of the funeral industry. Behind the pomp and display to the regular people who operate the hands on aspects of the dead. Caitlin Doughty shares her dream of the death industry and what kind of facility she would love to create that would be more than just a death home but a beautiful experience. Sharing her own thoughts made me think of my own. How do I view the death experience? How does my own perception colour the death experiences I have had? How has my own experiences with death shaped my life? How would I have done things differently if I had the chance?
After reading the book I found myself looking and seeing the signs of how we avoid death. Just little things here and there is the evidence of how we as a society have taken the avoidance of death to a whole new level as we complete remove it from our sight. The only sights of death most of us have is in media that we consume which isn’t death at all. It really makes me wonder if our avoidance of death and the motive of society to make it disappear is what has inspired the movement of limiting the holiday of Halloween. Think about it. Christmas items and decorations keep coming out earlier and earlier (this year my stores in town had decorations appearing two weeks before Halloween.) It is almost like we can drown in joy and forget about the death and darker things of life. What is the cost?
Reading this book was enlightening and thoughtful. No one reading will be able to look at the death industry or death itself in quite the same way afterwards. If you are interested in Caitlin Doughty’s work to make death positive check out her other books, website, podcast, or videos at the links below.
Caitlin Doughty website.
The Order of the Good Death podcast.
Recommendation
If you are interested in unveiling the death industry or learning more about what happens at a crematory check out this book. If you are curious to know about the cremation process more in depth from someone who has worked in the field this is also the book for you. It was an exploration of death, the people behind the doors, and the journey of discovering more about death. The author wrote beautifully, candidly, and clearly. If you want to do your own learning or research the author also includes a bibliography of books she has read on the subject that she references. By reading this book you get a glimpse of just one of the things that our culture or society can shape for the people’s perception of the static things in their world. Death is inevitable for every single one of us. We don’t know when, where, or why we will die but it will happen. By lifting the veil on death itself we can find the fuel to truly live. We can consciously make choices to prepare for our own death and how it may look. We will remove our fear by knowing what is going to happen at every step of the way. Happy Reading!