I’ve been watching Caitlin Doughty’s youtube videos for years but only recently decided to pick up one of her books. Now I’m sure I will be reading the other two as well. Her descriptions of different death cultures around the world were riveting and her writing style kept me reading and laughing for hours. As someone studying anthropology in my minor this was right up my alley. And while it might sound counterintuitive this book kept me calm these past few days while my grandmother was in the hospital for an emergency operation. While Switzerland doesn’t make the same big business out of death as the US does (Switzerland has a 85% cremation rate according to Caitlin’s book, which to me is certainly preferable to embalming) it is still true that we sanitize death and keep it out of everyday life. It seems important to me to start facing mortality more head on again. Caring for people doesn’t have to end at their death. My own journey towards death-consciousness started with Caitlin Doughty’s youtube channel ‘ask a mortician’, but I can also recommend this book as a starting point for such a journey.
