Home > Author > Caitlin Doughty
121 " But ignorance is not bliss, only a deeper kind of terror. We "
― Caitlin Doughty , Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory
122 " I understood that I had been given my atoms, the ones that made up my heart and toenails and kidneys and brain, on a kind of universal loan program. The time would come when I would have to give the atoms back, and I didn’t want to attempt to hold on to them through the chemical preservation of my future corpse. There "
123 " A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves. It is the only event in her life more awkward than her first kiss or the loss of her virginity. The hands of time will never move quite so slowly as when you are standing over the dead body of an elderly man with a pink plastic razor in your hand. Under "
124 " For those who do not wish to read realistic depictions of death and dead bodies, you have stumbled onto the wrong book. "
125 " Unfortunately, not every dead body goes to what might be considered “noble ends.” There is a slim possibility that your donated head will be the head, the head that holds the key to the mysteries of the twenty-first century’s great disease epidemics. But it is equally possible your body will end up being used to train a new crop of Beverly Hills plastic surgeons in the art of the facelift. Or dumped out of a plane to test parachute technology. Your body is donated to science in a very . . . general way. Where your parts go is not up to you. "
126 " Shinmon Aoki, a modern undertaker in Japan, described being ridiculed by society for his job washing and casketing the dead. His family disowned him and his wife wouldn't sleep with him because he was "defiled" by corpses. So Aoki purchased a surgical robe, mask, and gloves and began showing up to homes dressed in full medical garb. People began responding differently; they bought the image he was selling and called him "doctor." The American undertaker had done something similar: by making themselves "medical" they became legitimate. "
127 " The Cremulator” sounds like a cartoon villain or the name of a monster truck but is in fact the name of what is essentially a bone blender, roughly the size of a kitchen crockpot. I "
128 " There is a difficult discussion that rarely happens among American funeral directors: viewing the embalmed body is often an unpleasant experience for the family. THere are exceptions to this rule, but the immediate family is given almost no meaningful time with the body. Before the family has time to be with their dead person and process the loss, coworkers and distant cousins arrive, and everyone is forced into a public performance of grief and humility. I wondered what it would be like if there were places like Lastel in every major city. Spaces outside the stiff, ceremonial norm, where the family can just be with the body, free from the performance required at a formal viewing. Spaces that are safe, comfortable, like home. "
― Caitlin Doughty
129 " Since we had brought the offerings, I figured I had better talk to one of the natitas. I asked Nacho to influence the U.S. presidential election, which was being held the next day. I can only assume that either Nacho was not the right natita for American political matters or was rusty in his English. "
― Caitlin Doughty , From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
130 " The headstone is placed on top of the whole affair, like the cherry on a death-denial sundae. "
131 " Everywhere I traveled I saw this death space in action, and I felt what it means to be held. At Ruriden columbarium in Japan, I was held by a sphere of Buddhas glowing soft blue and purple. At the cemetery in Mexico, I was held by a single wrought-iron fence in the light of tens of thousands of flickering amber candles. At the open-air pyre in Colorado, I was held within the elegant bamboo walls, which kept mourners safe as the flames shot high. There was magic to each of these places. There was grief, unimaginable grief. But in that grief there was no shame. These were places to meet despair face to face and say, 'I see you waiting there. And I feel you, strongly. But you do not demean me. "
132 " Then again, death brings the inevitable loss of control. It seemed unfair that I could spend a lifetime making sure I was dressed well and saying all the right things only to end up dead and powerless at the end. "
133 " Holding the space doesn't mean swaddling the family immobile in their grief. It also means giving them meaningful tasks...A sense of purpose helps the mourner grieve. Grieving helps the mourner begin to heal. "
134 " Such was the case with dead bodies. Every time you opened the box you could find anything from a ninety-five-year-old woman who died peacefully under home hospice care to a thirty-year-old man they found in a dumpster behind a Home Depot after eight days of putrefaction. Each person was a new adventure. "
135 " As a teenager with morbid proclivities, my only real social outlets in Hawai’i were the gothic and S&M fetish clubs with names like “Flesh” and “The Dungeon” that took place on Saturday nights in warehouses down by the airport. My friends and I, all uniform-wearing private-school girls by day, would tell our parents we were having a sleepover and instead change into black vinyl ball gowns we ordered off the Internet. Then we’d go to the clubs and get tied to iron crosses and publicly flogged amid puffing fog machines. After the clubs closed at two a.m. we’d go into a twenty-four-hour diner called Zippy’s, invariably get called “witches” by some confused late-night patrons, wash off our makeup in the bathroom, and sleep for a few hours in my parents’ car. Since I was also on my school’s competitive outrigger canoe paddling team, the next morning I would have to peel off the vinyl ball gown and paddle in the open ocean for two hours as dolphins leapt majestically next to our boat. Hawai’i is an interesting place to grow up. "
136 " In many ways, women are death’s natural companions. Every time a woman gives birth, she is creating not only a life, but also a death. Samuel Beckett wrote that women “give birth astride of a grave.” Mother Nature is indeed a real mother, creating and destroying in a constant loop. "
137 " The fastest-growing religion in America is “no religion”—a group that comprises almost 20 percent of the population in the United States. Even "
138 " The concept of the body as canvas becomes more powerful if the canvas is dead. "
139 " pickled in formaldehyde and painted like a whore, / Shrimp-pink incorruptible, not lost or gone before. "
140 " A corpse doesn't need you to remember it. In fact, it doesn't need anything anymore--it's more than happy to lie there and rot away. It is you who needs the corpse. Looking at the body you understand the person is gone, no longer an active player in the game of life. Looking at the body you see yourself, and you know that you, too, will die. That visual is a call to self-awareness. It is the beginning of wisdom. "