It’s that which “helps the mourner begin to heal. She visited glass coffins in Spain a crematorium in Japan, where nearly all residents are cremated and Bolivia, where skulls are said to dispense advice. And everywhere, she saw “grief, unimaginable grief. She went to Mexico, where she met a grieving young mother who “just wanted to engage with death … frequent it, mock it, caress it.”ĭoughty’s travels took her to North Carolina, and a new method of body disposal. She wanted to show that there is no one, correct way to understand or deal with the deaths of our loved ones. Doughty, herself a funeral home owner, was inspired to witness how death is dealt with in other cultures. In Indonesia, Doughty visited cliffside graves with “a scholar of the macabre,” who also took her to a village where people live with (and sometimes sleep next to) their dead –perhaps for years. From Here To Eternity by Caitlin Doughty is a fascinating look at funerary practices from around the world. In a tiny town in Colorado, she visited “the only community open-air pyre in America.” Its founders worked hard to gain acceptance from locals and to change laws regarding open-air cremation today, people relocate in order to take advantage of the pyre. And so, she went in search of a “good death.”
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