"A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves."

With this opening line, we are thrown into the start of Doughty's career in the death industry. The candid tone of this memoir was so immediately engrossing, I found myself actively slowing down my reading speed so that I could savor the combination of hilarity and horror in her work. Caitlin Doughty has my sense of humor - I want to be her friend, I want to listen to her talk about this for hours. For now, I'll settle for another book like this.

Through carefully crafted anecdotes in her career that were effortlessly interspersed with history of the death industry, I learned enough to be curious enough to look through the want ads in my own area. Death is endlessly fascinating and all the fiddly bits surrounding it in our society just make it more so. For example, I never once thought about who it was that picks up the body of someone who has died (naturally) in their own home - turns out, you can call a mortician for that.

I would read an entire book about Doughty and her colleague Chris and their improbable body removals.

We continued into a bedroom to find Mom. As we pulled out the sheet to shroud her, the woman hurled her body over her mother, wailing dramatically. “No, Mother, no, no! I need you, Mother, don’t leave me!”


This is what raw human emotion should look like. It had all the signs: death, loss, gut-wrenching wailing. I wanted to be moved, but I wasn’t. “Guilt,” Chris mumbled under his breath.


“What?” I whispered back.


“Guilt. I’ve seen this so many times. She hasn’t visited her for years. Now she’s here acting like she can’t live without her mother. It’s bullshit, Cat,” he said. And I knew he was right.

I adore this passage. It says quite a lot about those in the industry and their ability to cold read the living people they're forced to deal with - people who are in the throes of what may be the worst days of their lives. For better (compassion, empathy, understanding) or worse (upselling a gold-plated casket).

Doughty is firm on the idea that modern culture thrives on the concept of death denial and with endless examples (from the multimillion dollar anti-aging beauty industry to the extensive embalming processes), I'm convinced. Throw me in a ditch with a handful of seeds when I’m done for in this world, I’m uninterested in being preserved like some sort of doll.

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.

If you have the least amount of curiosity about what happens in a crematory and a relatively liberal sense of humor regarding dead bodies, pick this up. It is absorbing, funny and informative. I cannot say enough excellent things about it.