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Category: Caitlin Doughty

Caitlin Doughty

The biggest problem is the funerals that don’t exist. People call the funeral home, they pick up the body, they mail the ashes to you, no grief, no happiness, no remembrance, no nothing. That happens more often than it doesn’t in the United States.

Home, Grief, Problem

Caitlin Doughty

The death industry markets caskets and embalming under the rubric of helping bodies look ‘natural,’ but our current death customs are as natural as training majestic creatures like bears and elephants to dance in cute little outfits, or erecting replicas of the Eiffel Tower and Venetian canals in the middle of the harsh American desert.

Dance, Training, American

Caitlin Doughty

If we ignore our death, we end up just going around completely oblivious to why we do the things we do!

Caitlin Doughty

For thousands of years, we did have death surrounding us, and we did have people die in the home. You would take care of your own end. You would do ritual processes, and you would be involved in it, and that’s been taken away in the Western world.

Home, World, End

Caitlin Doughty

A culture that denies death is a barrier to achieving a good death. Overcoming our fears and wild misconceptions about death will be no small task, but we shouldn’t forget how quickly other cultural prejudices–racism, sexism, homophobia–have begun to topple in the recent past. It is high time death had its own moment of truth.

culture, culture-critique, death

Caitlin Doughty

A cult leader alone in his beliefs is just a crazy dude with a beard.

cult, culture, death

Caitlin Doughty

The fear of death is why we build cathedrals, have children, declare war, and watch cat videos online at three a.m.

cat-videos, culture, death, death-and-dying, humor

Caitlin Doughty

The earth is expertly designed to take back what it has created. Bodies left for carrion in enclosed, regulated spaces could be the answer to the environmental problems of burial and cremation. There is no limit to where our engagement with death can take us.

death-and-dying

Caitlin Doughty

It is never too early to start thinking about your own death and the deaths of those you love. I don’t mean thinking about death in obsessive loops, fretting that your husband has been crushed in a horrific car accident, or that your plane will catch fire and plummet from the sky. But rational interaction, that ends with you realizing that you will survive the worst, whatever the worst may be. Accepting death doesn’t mean that you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like “Why do people die?” and “Why is this happening to me?” Death isn’t happening to you. Death is happening to us all.

death-and-dying

Caitlin Doughty

By not talking about death with our loved ones, not being clear through advanced directives, DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, and funeral plans, we are directly contributing to this future … and a rather bleak present, at that. Rather than engage in larger societal discussions about dignified ways for the terminally ill to end their lives, we accept intolerable cases like that of Angelita, a widow in Oakland who covered her head with a plastic bag because the arthritic pain of her gnarled joints was too much to bear. Or that of Victor in Los Angeles, who hung himself from the rafters of his apartment after his third unsuccessful round of chemotherapy, leaving his son to discover his body. Or the countless bodies with decubitus ulcers, more painful for me to care for them even babies or suicides. When these bodies come into the funeral home, I can only offer my sympathy to their living relatives, and promise to work to ensure that more people are not robbed of a dignified death by a culture of silence.

death, death-and-dying, dignified-death

Caitlin Doughty

As a general rule, if anyone ever asks you to put stockings on a ninety-year old deceased Romanian woman with oedema, your answer should be no.

death, humor, science

Caitlin Doughty

The great triumph (or horrible tragedy, depending on how you look at it) of being human is that our brains have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to understand our mortality. We are, sadly, self-aware creatures. Even if we move through the day finding creative ways to deny our mortality, no matter how powerful, loved, or special we may feel, we know we are ultimately doomed to death and decay. This is a mental burden shared by precious few other species on Earth.

death, psychology