Bringing new life to the topic of death
Mortician Caitlin Doughty is dead-set on changing the American funeral industry. The former teenage goth took her first job in the death biz in San Francisco when she was 22. Sometime around shaving her first corpse and operating the 1,800-degree crematory oven, she locked eyes with the Grim Reaper and never blinked.
After graduating from mortuary school, she opened her own funeral home, wrote two memoirs and developed a web series, “Ask a Mortician,” where she educates the morbidly curious (ahem, all of us) on such taboo topics as necrophilia and sewing a mouth shut. Her approach is wickedly funny while packing in concrete info.
In her new book, “Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?” Doughty answers the frank queries of teenagers and other kids (“Can I keep my parents’ skulls after they die?”). At her Los Angeles apartment decorated with vintage curios, we talked about what’s missing from the typical American funeral. Why are you on this mission to talk about death?
I want to tell other people what I am seeing. I feel like I have some privileged access, like I was almost inducted into a secret society. But why don’t we all have this knowledge? That’s what got me so interested in the history of the American funeral industry and how death has become so hidden, corporate, and away from the family. What’s wrong with the funeral industry?
There’s a complete lack of family involvement in any sort of ritual or hands-on experiences around the body — 100 or 50 years ago, families entirely took care of the body, the funeral and the burial. It was 100% the family and now it’s 100% a business that does it. There’s this perception that you have to immediately turn a body over to a funeral director, and only they know what to do with this unwieldy dangerous body. But listen, it’s not going to start immediately decomposing or releasing Ebola. It’s your mom. Why did you decide to address kids?
Kids are so articulate and curious. They’re allowed to have these dark questions and bring them to their parents, and the parents will engage them on it. The idea is also to give older people a vocabulary. To be able to talk about death not only to their kids but to themselves. I’m trying to reinforce with my friendly voice again and again that it’s OK to be interested in death. It doesn’t mean you’re a disturbed or broken, it means you’re curious. There’s nothing wrong with asking about death. Wappler is the author of “Neon Green” and a former co-host of the Pop Rocket podcast.