Caitlin Marie Doughty (born August 19, 1984)[3][1] is an American mortician, author, blogger, YouTuber, and advocate for death acceptance and the reform of Western funeral industry practices. She is the owner of Clarity Funerals and Cremation of Los Angeles, creator of the Web series Ask a Mortician, founder of The Order of the Good Death, and author of three bestselling books, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory (2014), From Here to Eternity; Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (2017), and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death (2019).
Doughty grew up in Kaneohe,[4]Oahu, Hawaii, where she had no exposure to death until, at age 8, she witnessed another child fall to her death from a balcony at a shopping mall.[5] She was quickly taken from the scene of the accident and it was never spoken of again. For several years, she became obsessed with fears of her own or her family's deaths.[6] Doughty says she could have recovered better from the incident if she had been given the opportunity to face the reality of the child's death.
After graduation and moving to San Francisco in 2006, at age 22, she sought hands-on exposure to modern death practices in funeral homes, and after seeking employment for six months, was hired in the crematory of Pacific Interment (called Westwind Cremation & Burial in her book) despite her lack of any experience in the funeral industry.[5][8][9][10] Pacific Interment could be called "the anti-Forest Lawn", referring to what Doughty sees as the theme-park-like, kitschy corporate funeral behemoth that much of modern American funeral practice is modeled on.[11] She picked up corpses from homes and hospitals in a van, prepared them for viewings, cremated them, and delivered the cremains to the families.[5][9] Dealing with bureaucracy, such as acquiring death certificates or obtaining the release of a body from the coroner, occupied much of her work.[9] Her supervisor and coworkers at Pacific Interment often tested her with hands-on assignments, as on her first day at work she had to shave a corpse, and Doughty accepted any task.[10][11]
Doughty has said she knew almost from the beginning of her work in the death industry that she wanted to change attitudes about death and find a way to offer alternative funeral arrangements.[9] After one year at the crematory, Doughty attended Cypress College's Mortuary Science program and graduated as a certified mortician,[5] though in California there are paths to becoming licensed without attending mortuary college.[9] She founded The Order of the Good Death, an association of like-minded death professionals, along with artists, writers, and academics who shared her goals of reforming Western attitudes about death, funerals, and mourning.[5]
Advocacy
Embalming table and instruments
Doughty's main inspiration for her advocacy work was the frequent absence of the decedents' families in the process, which she attributed to the Western death anxiety and death phobia.[5] She wanted to encourage death acceptance, and a return to such practices as memento mori, reminders of one's own mortality, resulting in healthier grieving, mourning, and closure after the inevitable deaths of people around us, as well as starting a movement to broaden the funeral industry to offer more funeral options, such as natural burial, sky burial, and alkaline hydrolysis (liquid cremation).[3][5][8]Embalming began to dominate in the US after the Civil War. A century later, in the 1960s, Americans began to turn away from embalming and burial, as cremation became increasingly popular, so that today it is used in almost half of deaths in urban areas.[9] Cremation is seen as a threat to the traditional funeral industry, but has a reputation as the more environmentally friendly option.[9] This change can be traced to the lifting of the ban on cremation by Pope Paul VI in 1963, and to the publication in the same year of The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford, documenting abuses in the funeral industry and criticizing the excessive cost of funerals. Mitford's book, and the movement it started, was one of Doughty's inspirations, but Doughty feels that while Mitford had the right target, the profit-driven funeral industry, Mitford erred in sharing the industry's, and the public's, unhealthy desire to push out of sight and avoid thinking about the corpse itself.[12] Doughty seeks to build on Mitford's reforms but in a direction that embraces the reality of death and returns to funeral and mourning practices that include spending time with and having contact with the dead body itself.[12]
Funeral pyre in Nepal
Doughty advocates reappropriating pejoratives like 'morbid', and wants to reverse the attitude that "talking about death is deviant".[9] She says, "Death is not deviant, it's actually the most normal and universal act there is."[9] She is working to overcome the belief that dead bodies are dangerous and can only be handled by trained professionals using technical equipment and specialized facilities.[9] She says the most important thing she wants the public to know is that the corpse is the family's legal quasi-property, and that, "you have the power over what happens to that body. Don't let anyone, funeral home, hospital, coroner, etc., pressure you into making a quick decision you might regret. Take the time to do your research and understand your options. The dead person will still be dead in 24 hours; you have time to make the right decision for you."[13]
While a body is not commercial property, which can be transferred or held for a debt, for purposes of burial the body is treated as the next of kin's property.[14][15] Her highest priority changes that she would like to see in US law would be the repeal of the laws in eight states that require a funeral home for at least some part of the process, and to make alkaline hydrolysis available in more than the current eight states.[3]
One funeral industry professional of 40 years experience lauded the goal of greater family involvement in funerals, but said it was "virtually impossible" for many families today to return to preparing bodies themselves or hosting wakes in their own homes, citing the challenges of moving a body themselves, or dealing with a body that had been autopsied, or, especially, the innate fear of contact with the dead, which he did not think would "ever change".[5] Doughty says her "dream funeral is one where the family is involved, washing and dressing the body and keeping it at home. When they've taken the time they need with the dead person, transporting the person to a natural burial cemetery and putting them straight into the ground, no heavy sealed casket or vault. Just food for worms."[9]
Mourners viewing a body in Florida
NPR interviewer Terry Gross said to Doughty that if she spent time at home with a loved one's body in a natural state, she feared she would be left with her last memory of them as a corpse, growing cold and showing subtle changes that indicate the permanence of the end of life, the very things Doughty said are the goal of closer involvement in the death process.[14] Doughty said she has never heard regrets from anyone who has done it; rather, they said it was a positive experience where they felt empowered and that they were "giving something back to this person that you loved." Conversely, Doughty has heard from many who only briefly saw the body in a hospital, and later in an artificial, embalmed state, and they regret not having more time to grieve close to the corpse.[14]
Gross asked Doughty if people seeking out and witnessing death in beheading videos is comparable to the comfortability with death that she advocates, and Doughty said they were in no way similar, one "a form of psychological terror" and the other "a dead body in its natural state."[14] But, Doughty said, terrorists know how strong the modern fear and denial of death is, and they are exploiting that to heighten the force of the terror they cause.[14]
Ask a Mortician
Doughty's YouTube series Ask a Mortician began in 2011,[9] humorously explores morbid and sometimes taboo death topics such as decomposition and necrophilia.[5] By 2012, after 12 episodes, Ask a Mortician had 434,000 views,[8] and by January 2022 the channel had 258 clips with a total of 215,000,000 views.[16] Doughty uses an irreverent, offbeat and surreal tone to attract the largest possible audience for a subject that is otherwise off-putting and depressing to many potential viewers.[5][9] Doughty said, "I take my job and this whole movement incredibly seriously. I do [the videos] with a sense of humor, but it's my life, and it's really important to me that a positive death message gets across."[8]
Fans of Ask a Mortician have told Doughty they were shamed for wanting to view the corpse of someone they lost, which Doughty says is the result of the death industry "whitewashing death".[8] Doughty instead advocates spending time with the body, not just hours, but around two days, to fully accept the death. She also encourages rituals and personal participation in the preparation of the corpse, including washing or dressing it.[8]
Originally focused on answering questions from viewers, the Ask a Mortician series has largely shifted focus to a series of short form documentaries where Doughty speaks about notable historical events involving death. These have varied from a series on funeral home malfeasance called “Cadaver Crimes” to stories about famous shipwrecks such as the disaster of the SS Eastland.
Books
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Reading in Seattle in 2014
In September 2014, Doughty's first book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory was published by W. W. Norton & Company. It is a memoir of her experiences that serves as a manifesto of her goals.[5] The book is named for the 20th-century pop song "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", in reference to both the literal smoke of cremation and the associated emotions.[9] W. W. Norton's Tom Mayer outbid seven other publishers for the worldwide rights to Smoke Gets in Your Eyes in 2012.[17] The book debuted at No. 14 on The New York Times and at No. 10 on the Los Angeles Times bestseller lists of hardcover nonfiction for the week ending October 5, 2014.[18][19]
Doughty's intention with the book was to combine "memoir, science, and manifesto" in an entertaining way that would attract a wide readership to the unpleasant topics of death, decay, and corpse handling, to challenge the reader to confront their own mortality.[13] Doughty says readers have told her that they themselves are fascinated by the graphic descriptions of such things as "stomach-content removal" or the "bubblating" of human fat during a cremation, yet they are "not sure other people will be able to handle it."[13] Doughty said, "I think we need to admit that, as a group, as humans, we are all drawn to the gory details. When reality is hidden from us, we crave it."[13]
The Washington Post noted that while Doughty's "endearingly anxious inner workings take up a large part" of the book, there are also portraits of her three eccentric coworkers at Pacific Interment, who each teach lessons she carries after leaving to attend mortuary school.[11] "What holds Smoke Gets in Your Eyes together," the Post said, is Doughty's overarching goal to increase the reader's awareness of their own mortality and face their fear of death, and the book's effective use of humor keeps it from being too sorrowful or gruesome, in spite of its graphic descriptions.[11]The Boston Globe's review of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes said that, "If at times Doughty's voice is a bit too breezy ... her observations are solid."[20] The Fredericksburg, VirginiaFree Lance-Star said the book was engrossing and "fulfills all its pre-pub hype, jacket blurbs and positive advance reviews".[12]Natalie Kusz wrote in The New York Times Book Review that, "the book is more consequential than its spin potential, [...] more cultural critique than exposé," using Doughty's personal narrative to lead the public to a new relationship with death.[21]
Since writing the book, Doughty began working to launch Undertaking LA, a funeral service alternative to the mainstream funeral options.[5] It started as a seminar series meant to educate the public on their death options under California law.[13] As of 2014, the service consisted of "two licensed morticians telling the public, 'you don't need us!'", instead advocating DIY funerals.[9]
From Here to Eternity
Doughty's second book, From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, illustrated by Landis Blair, was published in October 2017. It chronicles Doughty's travels to see first-hand death customs in Mexico, Indonesia, Japan, Spain, and Bolivia, as well as at home in the US, at an open air funeral pyre and a body farm. In the book's introduction, Doughty said Americans too often spend more than they need to on funerals for things they do not really want or need, and have a less healthy grieving process because of a culture of avoiding conversations about death, avoiding the subject as taboo. She said the establishment funeral industry benefits from public's ignorance of the options and rights they have in how to handle the death, having no incentive to correct the perception that handing the body over to a funeral home for a traditional funeral is the best or only option. The book's goal is to change that culture by, "witnessing firsthand how death is handled in other cultures" in the hope that she can "demonstrate that there is no one prescribed way to 'do' or understand death."[22] The book reached No. 7 on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list and No. 9 on The New York Times list.[23][24][25][26][27]
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?
Doughty's third book, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death, answers 35 questions sourced from children. The book originated from Doughty's observation that most adults she encountered had not received adequate death education.[28]
An excerpt, read by Doughty, will appear on the new Lit Hub/Podglomerate Storybound podcast, accompanied by an original score from singer-songwriter Stephanie Strange.[29][30]
Doughty is the founder of "The Order of the Good Death" an inclusive community of funeral industry professionals, academics, as well as artists who advocate for and make possible, a more death informed society.[5] "The Order of the Good Death" is presented to the public as a website that shares articles and information by prominent figures in the death industry that make individuals more informed about the inevitable conclusion of one's life.[31] In previous years the public had an engagement with the cemetery as a community place, which people do not have anymore.[31] The Order of the Good Death is Doughty's way of creating a community while teaching individuals to accept death.[31] Doughty's work has a strong focus on ways of "making death a part of one's life".[31] "If Doughty and the Order's death-care revolution is successful, Americans will be more comfortable contemplating mortality and dying— thus preparing for it, seriously considering alternatives such as green burial, composting, and using crematoria that have carbon-offset policies".[32]
↑ Washburn, Michael (April 13, 2012). "Decomposure". The University of Chicago Magazine. Archived from the original on September 27, 2020. Retrieved August 5, 2020.
1 2 "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory", Publishers Weekly, PWxyz LLC –viaGeneral OneFile(subscription required), p.60, August 11, 2012
1 2 3 4 Washburn, Michael (March–April 2013), "Decomposure", University of Chicago Magazine, archived from the original on December 27, 2014, retrieved September 18, 2014
A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect the dead, from interment, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour. Customs vary between cultures and religious groups. Funerals have both normative and legal components. Common secular motivations for funerals include mourning the deceased, celebrating their life, and offering support and sympathy to the bereaved; additionally, funerals may have religious aspects that are intended to help the soul of the deceased reach the afterlife, resurrection or reincarnation.
Cremation is a method of final disposition of a dead body through burning.
The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy (1948) is a short satirical novel by British novelist Evelyn Waugh about the funeral business in Los Angeles, the British expatriate community in Hollywood, and the film industry.
A funeral director, also known as an undertaker or mortician, is a professional who has licenses in funeral arranging and embalming involved in the business of funeral rites. These tasks often entail the embalming and burial or cremation of the dead, as well as the arrangements for the funeral ceremony. Funeral directors may at times be asked to perform tasks such as dressing, casketing, and cossetting with the proper licenses. A funeral director may work at a funeral home or be an independent employee.
Cypress College is a public community college in Cypress, California. It is part of the California Community Colleges System and belongs to the North Orange County Community College District. It offers a variety of general education, transfer courses, and 145 vocational programs leading to associate degrees and certificates.
In death customs, a viewing is the time that family and friends come to see the deceased before the funeral, once the body has been prepared by a funeral home. It is generally recommended that a body first be embalmed to create the best possible presentation of the deceased. A viewing may take place at the funeral home's chapel, in a family home or at a place of worship, such as a church. Some cultures, such as the Māori of New Zealand, often take the body to the marae or tribal community hall.
Icelandic funerals are ceremonies that are largely shaped by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland, the largest Christian organisation in Iceland. However, customs may vary depending on religious group.
A crematorium or crematory is a venue for the cremation of the dead. Modern crematoria contain at least one cremator, a purpose-built furnace. In some countries a crematorium can also be a venue for open-air cremation. In many countries, crematoria contain facilities for funeral ceremonies, such as a chapel. Some crematoria also incorporate a columbarium, a place for interring cremation ashes.
Beyond the Darkness is a 1979 Italian exploitation horror film directed by Joe D'Amato. It follows Francesco Koch, an orphaned taxidermist who inherits a house in the woods where he lives with his housekeeper Iris, who is determined to become the new owner. After Iris kills his girlfriend Anna with a voodoo curse, Francesco steals her corpse from the local cemetery. He then commits murders connected to his enduring passion for her. A local undertaker investigates and meets Teodora, Anna's twin sister.
Alkaline hydrolysis is a process for the disposal of human and pet remains using lye and heat, and is an alternative to burial or cremation.
Among Buddhists, death is regarded as one of the occasions of major religious significance, both for the deceased and for the survivors. For the deceased, it marks the moment when the transition begins to a new mode of existence within the round of rebirths. When death occurs, all the karmic forces that the dead person accumulated during the course of their lifetime become activated and determine the next rebirth. For the living, death is a powerful reminder of the Buddha's teaching on impermanence; it also provides an opportunity to assist the deceased person as they transition to a new existence. There are several academic reviews of this subject. In Buddhism, death marks the transition from this life to the next for the deceased.
The death care industry in the United States includes companies and organizations that provide services related to death: funerals, cremation or burial, and memorials. This includes for example funeral homes, coffins, crematoria, cemeteries, and headstones. The death care industry within the U.S. consists mainly of small businesses, although there has been considerable consolidation over time.
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is a show tune from the musical Roberta.
Greg Lundgren is a Seattle-based artist, author, filmmaker and entrepreneur.
The Order of the Good Death is a death acceptance organization founded in 2011 by mortician and author Caitlin Doughty. The group advocates for natural burial and embracing human mortality.
Women have had varying roles in the death care industry in the United States since its mid-nineteenth century inception.
A Mortician's Tale is a management video game developed by Laundry Bear Games. Players take control of a mortician working in a funeral home. The game was released for Windows and macOS in October 2017.
Recompose is a public benefit corporation founded by designer and death care advocate Katrina Spade in 2017, building upon her 2014 non-profit organization Urban Death Project.
Cremation in Japan was originally practiced by monks seeking to emulate the cremation of the Buddha. Virtually all deceased are now cremated in Japan – as of 2012, it had the highest cremation rate in the world of over 99.9%. The Meiji government attempted to ban the practice in the 19th century, but the ban was only in effect for less than two years.
The Mortuary Collection is a 2019 American horror anthology film written and directed by Ryan Spindell. It stars Clancy Brown, Caitlin Custer, Christine Kilmer, Jacob Elordi, Barak Hardley, Sarah Hay, Mike C. Nelson, and V Nixie.
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