Showing up for the Dead: A review of "From Here to Eternity"

The publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, provided me with a free, advanced copy of this book for

Now that's a good cover!

review.

Caitlin Doughty is one of those writers (one of those people in general) who in my eyes can do no wrong. I am a Caitlin Doughty fangirl. Telling people you are a fan of an author is a sentiment easier to convey rather than exclaiming: "I'm a big fan of books about death and dying!" Let me tell you: admissions like that don't often land well in conversation.

Other admissions that don't sit well:
Acquaintance: "Hey, what are you reading and giggling about over there at the lunch table?"
Me: "A research facility in North Carolina that is composting donor bodies."

*crickets* 



Doughty's first book Smoke Gets in Your Eyes  was one that made me sit up straighter so I could listen carefully.  Her story of how she came to be a mortician, her observations of the current funeral industry, and how this influenced her to open a funeral home (Undertaking LA).  It is through this home she hopes to encourage death acceptance in our culture.

That was a good book and I recommend it. However, it was a memoir. There was a bit of navel-gazing that us readers who were more interested in the death & dying weren't crazy about but Doughty is witty and candid. It's Doughty's personality that will carry you through her writing when it's not at its best.

Her latest book From Here to Eternity is an international tour of how cultures honor, bury, and care for their dead. While a book about death tourism seems like it would be a natural debut outing for a writer, Doughty was clever and made us fall in love with her in her first book.  We longed for her to tell us more. She has heard the call and delivered.

From Here to Eternity is better than Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and I think it's the book we thought we were getting the first time.

Doughty's advice to begin caring for our own dead and assuage the shame and fear associated with death/dying is to "show up"  for it and be engaged. We are not the deceased in Emily Dickinson's famous poem who is too busy (busy dying?) to stop for death. Doughty wants us to stop, accept mortality, and to care for the dead. She shows us how that is accomplished across the world in fantastic, beautiful and compassionate traditions. Occasionally, these are traditions that our American culture would deem horrific and disrespectful.

In Japan cremated remains can be displayed in a high-tech building maintained by a Buddhist monk. A smart card allows a family member to find their loved one in a room of Buddhas, each their own individual LED-light. When the card is tapped a Buddha lights up white while all the rest are blue and thus there is no confusion finding your loved one.

Over in Bolivia the dead sometimes receive the honor of becoming a mummified head that can perform miracles and grant favors (much to the dismay of the Catholic Church) to those who seek their powers. These human skulls live with a caretaker in their home and have their own celebration every year.

However you choose to think about death, there is no doubt that this book resonates. If dying is an "awfully big adventure" wouldn't you want the power to choose your own adventure?