From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty

What goes on behind the scenes to make a body look good is. It doesn't have to be focused on a casket - where the more spent is associated with a better funeral for the person who died and where the body is prettied up for viewing in a very brutal and invasive method of embalming behind-the-scenes. We, in the Western World can do Death better. Thoughtful guide pointing to a new (old) pathway She lives in Los Angeles, where she runs her nonprofit funeral home, Undertaking LA. From Here to Eternity introduces death-care innovators researching green burial and body composting, explores new spaces for mourning - including a glowing Buddha columbarium in Japan and America's only open-air pyre - and reveals unexpected new possibilities for our own death rituals.Īuthor bio: Mortician Caitlin Doughty - host and creator of Ask a Mortician and the New York Times best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - founded the death acceptance collective The Order of the Good Death and cofounded Death Salon. With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters vividly decomposed bodies and participates in compelling, powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in America. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls) and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved ones' bones from cremation ashes. Grandpa's mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship.

In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body. The best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with 'dignity'.įascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead.

From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty