From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars How People Around the World and in the US Do Death The funerals and cremations of my Japanese wife’s parents were unforgettable experiences that forcibly remind me that Japan is—even after I’ve lived here for thirty years—a foreign country. My in-laws’ last rites were smoothly managed by funeral home companies but also incorporated plenty of family participation: we helped to prepare and view her parents’ bodies, touched their calm cold faces, put drops of water on their lips via a leaf, covered them with fragrant flowers in their coffins, burnt incense and prayed and listened to Buddhist monks chanting while periodically ringing brass bowl bells, went to the crematorium together, said good bye to her father and mother before their ovens, and finally used chopsticks to choose the bones we wanted to keep. Nothing like a funeral to show you the culture where it takes place! So I was keen to read mortician Caintin Doughty’s book, From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (2017), to see what she’d make of death in Japan and other countries. Because the “corporatization and the commercialization of death” has made America fall behind other countries in the handling and processing of death, Doughty wants us to rethink it by showing how people in other countries and or special situations treat it. She organizes her compact, absorbing, moving, and funny book into chapters depicting her travels to communities and countries like-- Colorado, Crestone The history and operation of a unique open-air crematorium in a rural Colorado community; some history of cremation (including 42,000-year-old cremated bones found in Australia); and details on how difficult it is to try new (cheaper) ways of treating death in America because of the powerful funeral home industry. One of the interesting facts she presents is that cremation has become the most common way to deal with the dead in the USA. Indonesia: South Sulawesi A remote region in Indonesia: the Holy Grail of corpse interaction, where families live with their mummified “deceased” loved ones for months or years, sleeping with them, dressing them, standing them against the wall, and so on, and then after the dead go into grave houses, families annually undress them, clean them, dress them in new clothes, and celebrate them. Mexico: Michoacan How compared to Americans Mexicans have a “gay familiarity” with death and the history and description of their Day of the Dead festival. Painful digressions on the dispossession of Mexican American families from their homes in Chavez Ravine to make room for Dodger Stadium and her friend Sarah’s finally coming to some terms with the death of her unborn son by getting in touch with her Mexican heritage with Frido Khalo as gateway. North Carolina: Cullowhee Recomposition, the new green alternative. Put a body in high carbon setting and let its nitrogen molecules transform as it decomposes until ideally after 4-6 weeks all that’s left is a rich soil the family can use in their garden! Details on how bodies (even a dead whale) and a conclusion pointing out that most of the drivers of this new method are female, after men pushed women out of death by industrializing it at the start of the 20th century. Spain: Barcelona A cutting-edge funeral home, where families come to be with their deceased and watch the cremations, but always with layers of protective glass separating living from dead; details on the little embalming done in Spain (or Europe) and on cemetery plots being rented for five or so years to permit decomposition, after which bones are put in mass communal graves. Japan: Tokyo A corpse hotel where families spend time with their deceased before cremation; stats like 99.9% of Japanese funerals ending with cremation; a typical cremation with family members using chopsticks to pick up bones and deposit them in an urn; the Japanese mix of new tech and respect and love for the dead getting people to love the body and to spend enough time with it to process grief, unlike in the US where the funeral industry is ever reducing the time families spend with the deceased, the fear of the body in America increasing with the rate of cremation. Boliva: La Paz “Natitas,” sacred-magical more or less mummified skulls that people keep to use as intermediaries between the living and the dead, so that the living can consult them about problems about health, education, finance, lost pets, and the like. The skulls are celebrated each November 8, the Festival of the Skulls, and the Catholic Church has to grin and bear it and even bless them. Doughty sees women getting some power in the face of the Catholic Church. “Skulls are technology for disadvantaged people… no person is left behind.” California: Joshua Tree Natural burials in a tiny area of the National Park in the desert, and Doughty’s desire (which she knows can’t be fulfilled, given California’s conservative laws re death) to have an air burial for her corpse, with birds eating it. “I spent the first 30 years of my life devouring animals, so why, when I die, should they not have their turn with me? Am I not an animal?” In the Epilogue, Doughty urges us “to create a protective ring around the family and friends of the dead, providing a place where they can grieve openly and honestly, without fear of being judged.” We as family members have to “show up” by going to the cremation, going to the burial, applying lipstick to and cutting a locket of hair from the deceased. “Do not be afraid. These are human acts, acts of bravery and love in the face of death and loss.” In addition to being engaged with death, Doughty is witty about it, as in lines like “It makes you uneasy when you see a body where it's not supposed to be, like seeing your chemistry teacher at the supermarket.” Perhaps in her desire to shock us into rethinking death, Doughty may over-emphasize the sensational aspects of the different cultures she’s visited and de-emphasize the quiet ones. In her Japan chapter, although she does mention the post-cremation chopsticks custom, she spends way more time on rare and quirky aspects (like the LED Buddha columbarium light show) and doesn’t mention less entertaining things about the Japanese funeral like Buddhist monk chanting, money giving (to the family), and gift giving (to the attendees). That makes me wonder if similar highlighting and downplaying is going on in other chapters in the book. As for the audiobook, it’s a pity that it’s missing the enticing appendices of the physical book, like “How to Be a Good Thanotourist” and “Fill-In Fun: Your Death Plan!” At least Doughty is a clear and enthusiastic reader. My only kvetch is that at times she uses the currently all-pervasive valley girl question intonation, as in “If I were the westerner? with the telephoto lens? who scared off the vultures? I'd have to leave myself out for the birds as well.” I recommend this book to anyone interested in or afraid of death. View all my reviews
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