Leaving Room for Death: A Textual Analysis of Caitlin Doughty’s “From Here to Eternity”

Introduction: Our Mortician

If I must describe death in any taste more palatable than “dreadful”, it would be “necessary.” Necessary to move things along. Make sure our Earth does not get so crowded with rotting, old animals, people, and plants. Still, I say this with a begrudging sort of acceptance. Yes, I admit. Death is alright. Sure, it is necessary. But why would I describe it as good? Or even as beautiful?

Caitlin Doughty is an American mortician, a founder of the death positivity movement, and the founder of the Order of the Good Death, an organization of like-minded advocates whose overarching goal is to help death-fearers digest the thought of their inevitable ends (Koksvik, 2020). In Doughty’s (2018) book, From Here to Eternity: Travelling the World to Find the Good Death, the mortician presents two major discourses about death in a comparative story of embraced versus feared, warm versus cold. Discourses are ways of interpretation, discussion, and knowledge. A discourse is a framework of normality: The collection of ideas and feelings we grow up with, which therefore becomes what we perceive as normal and routine (Brock et al., 2019). I am used to perceiving death as rather frigid and frightening. For me, this is my normal. I fear death. I avoid talking about it, and I avoid thinking about it, whether it is the fate of my loved ones or my own. When I see death, I look away.

Doughty (2018) calls this attitude the discourse of the West, or more specifically, that of the United States. Various other cultures hold death rituals and ideas often characterized by close family involvement in postmortem care, beauty, and seeking peace instead of anticipating grief. Besides attitudes, Doughty (2018) critiques the American funeral industry itself, arguing that expensive costs, chemical body preservation (embalming), and heavily mechanized cremation all put distance between the dearly departed and the living who love them. From Here to Eternity also communicates that anything different from the West is never undeserving of respect: “It is demonstrably wrong to claim that the West has death rituals that are superior to those of the rest of the world” (Doughty, 2018, p. 15).

These points form the overarching essence of our mortician’s argument: The Western approach to death lacks what she calls “holding the space,” which means “to create a ring of safety around the family and friends of the dead, providing a place where they can grieve openly and honestly” (Doughty, 2018, p. 232).

Part I: Traveling the World

Fearing death is subjective. Not everyone does, to my knowledge. But most do. It has to do with the natural fear of the unknown, I believe. Or with the anticipation that death will hurt, and it is in our nature to avoid hurting. It comes back to primal survival. But nurture plays an equal part: our culture, our environment. Epistemologies are frameworks of knowledge that are subjective by culture. To teach this term, Noack and Martin (2019) compare Indigenous cultures with those of Europeans. The former rest on a foundation of human relationships with the natural world and physical geography, and the latter on wisdom of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment values meant that European epistemologies became dominated by positivism, meaning worldviews governed by rationality, reason, and observable evidence. There is nothing antagonistic about this epistemology on its own. Rather, it became an issue when European settlers framed their inclination to science and rationality as the best way of knowing—in other words, superior to the otherness of Indigenous cultures (Noack & Martin, 2019). Doughty (2018) describes her experience with other morticians in her area, Los Angeles, who have looked down on her open mind to different customs. They have argued, for example, that chemical embalming is the only safe way to preserve a body, or that only professionals should handle dead bodies, perhaps ignoring that in many cultures and even in American history, it is and was common for families to take care of their own dead.

Doughty’s (2018) observations of Indonesia and Japan—and the West’s bewilderment at their rituals—showcase this difference of cultural worlds, and an unfortunate superiority complex. In Indonesia, the people of South Sulawesi remove their dead from graves to interact with them as if they were still alive. “One young man stood the mummy up as another sliced into its navy blazer with a pair of scissors,” shows the process of reintroducing the deceased to the fresh, living air (Doughty, 2018, p. 64). “The son began to clean the corpse, brushing his father’s leathery cheeks with short, loving strokes […] this was mourning as I had never seen it before,” she writes, marvelling at the closeness so long after death, as this particular corpse had been dead for nearly a decade (pp. 63-64). The epistemology of this Indonesian province is influenced by old, complex ideas rooted in the spirituality of nature and geography (Doughty, 2018). Like Indigenous North Americans, there is a solid relationship with the natural world, where the line between life and death is permeable. Interacting with the dead is not grotesque, as many Westerners might find, but a means for the living and deceased to bond spiritually. In an American knowledge framework, taking the company of a corpse has brought Norman Bates, a psychotic fictional hotel manager living with his long-dead mother, one of the most horrific reputations in the history of movie villains (Doughty, 2018).

In “Japan,” Doughty (2018) highlights a similar kind of Western disgust towards practices that are culturally meaningful locally. The boyfriend of Carita Ridgway, an Australian woman killed in Japan, found the tradition of grasping her cremated remains with chopsticks and setting them in an urn appalling and monstrous. Although this is only the reaction of one man, it is not difficult to assume that many others would have felt identically. Ridgway’s parents embraced it, however, praising the ritual for the emotions it allowed them to feel, such as a sense of tending to their daughter even after her death (Doughty, 2018). We can apply an interpretivist understanding of knowledge to these varying reactions to death practices. The behaviour of different people in response to a prompt—such as death customs—depends on their personal interpretations of what they feel is right or wrong about that prompt (Noack & Martin, 2019). Ridgway’s boyfriend interpreted the same Japanese tradition differently from her parents. By refusing to engage in the ritual, he behaved according to his interpretation of the tradition as wrong.

There are better attitudes than the Western attitude towards death, where “better” means to enable deep, uninhibited feelings and even beauty. This would be to hold space for death emotionally. In such chapters as “Mexico”, there are examples of how and why Doughty believes equating death to misery is not always necessary. In her exploration of Mexico, our mortician introduces us to Sarah, a young Mexican-American woman who has recently had a miscarriage. The American attitude of repression has worsened her mental health. Doughty (2018) recounts Sarah’s words: “I was asked by society to hide my grief … they didn’t want to confront such horrors” (p. 83). This references her struggle to talk about her tragedy with anyone in her life. Her parents were distant, and even friends were too unwilling to dig into her grief with her, preferring instead to avoid a gritty discussion of death before birth. Sarah consulted Internet forums and found benevolent, yet religiously imaginative advice that did not help her emotions (Doughty, 2018). These religious, grief-suppressing, perhaps overly optimistic tones from Internet women formed their interpretive repertoire of “terms, descriptions, metaphors, and figures of speech … that [they] use to locate their own position in the world around them” (Noack & Martin, 2019, p. 68). Noack and Martin (2019) might suggest that Sarah should find a new repertoire that better suits her idea of closure. In the West, death is a heavy topic. In terms of providing space to engage with it, who has the mental energy to engage? Who has the time to stop working to pause and talk about mortality? In Sarah’s case, the topic of death was dodged when possible, and euphemised when not (Doughty, 2018). Eventually, Sarah has enough, so she seeks out a different approach. Growing up in the United States, she had become alienated from her roots, but her grief was powerful enough to change this. Needing an outlet, Sarah eventually takes up the death discourse of her Mexican ancestors. She finds comfort in their intimacy with death: painting the faces of skeletons on the faces of the living, decorating cemeteries, and making various offerings to the deceased. These are common practices during the celebration of Día de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. During this celebration, people decorate altars and mummies in clothes, flowers, and candles. People are allowed to grieve, which Sarah does when she stands over the beautifully-dressed mummy of an infant girl, but in the mix, they hold parties and games. Open dialogue about the dead is also encouraged, where participants spend time with mummies to talk about their lives, say prayers, and wish them well on the other side (Doughty, 2018).

Such rituals are not done in the West. Doughty (2018) implies her criticism on the rigidity of Western death ideas; she considers them too formal, and too avoidant of natural human emotions and of the advantages of becoming familiar with death. Sarah’s American social circle euphemised her death experiences and approached her grief with distraction—an approach that communicates, “Shall we talk about other things? Anything but death.” Western discourses shy away from the beauty in the dead, unlike Mexico’s celebratory, hands-on, vibrant approach.

The antagonistic American discourse on death carries over into the realm of industrial procedures as well. Doughty’s (2018) constant enemy is the corporate, distancing quality of American death services. For instance, “most people could not tell you what chemicals are pumped into their mother during an embalming procedure” (p. 13). Once death occurs, people are encouraged to hand over their loved ones to the industry as quickly as possible. This can be detrimental to mental health as they must then process their grief alongside their wallets, navigating the staggering costs of funeral services like caskets, cremation, and burials (Doughty, 2018).

Altima is a sleek funeral home in Barcelona, Spain. Upon first glance, you would not think it was a funeral home, as our mortician calls its architecture a hybrid between a Silicon Valley tech headquarters and a Church of Scientology. However, Altima’s most striking quality in its funeral practice is the use of glass. Families can rent a room for the entire day, where their deceased stay displayed either behind a glass window or in a glass coffin. Even more interestingly, the cremation itself is done behind glass, save for the burning chamber itself. The figurative significance of glass is that despite providing a barrier between the living and the dead, “glass means transparency, unclouded confrontation with the brutal reality of death” (Doughty, 2018, p. 138). Furthermore, the physical benefit of glass is that, people can see cremation in action. They can watch nearly the entire process, know exactly how the professionals are handling their loved ones. Doughty (2018) notes admirably that “people showed up for death” in Barcelona—around 60% of cremations in Altima were attended by an audience (p. 150). The American contrast is that most people do not show up for death. Cremations are not witnessed as rapturously as they are in Barcelona. American funeral homes tend not to offer comfortable places for families and friends to sit with their loved ones for day-long visits prior to cremation or burial. Cremation is done in warehouse-like buildings. While the option to stay for the procedure is available, Doughty (2018) notes that many Americans are uninformed about this option, suggesting that the funeral industry lacks transparency and communication.

American death discourse has taken hold in some countries we would not consider Western, such as the small, Central American nation of Belize. Under American influence, larger urban centres in Belize have raised the costs of funeral necessities like headstones and coffins, and also warmed up to autopsying. Autopsying, studying the body after death to determine cause of death, is not always necessary and not always desired by the family, but hospitals in Belize often go through with autopsies regardless. Situations like these create a sense of distrust and tension between death professionals and everyday people, which Doughty (2018) illustrates through her experience with Luciano, a Belizean man who drove her past a lagoon to the hut she rented for her visit. He told her plainly, “That’s why we thieved her body,” referencing how he and his family robbed his grandmother’s body from the hospital. She did not want to be examined post-mortem, yet the hospital was going to do it anyway (p. 5).

Part II: Holding Spaces

To hold space for death, as seen in the above discussion, can apply to both physical environment and actions, and to human emotions. Families and friends of the dead find unique ways to feel connected to them, even years after death, as seen in Indonesia or Mexico. They care for their mummies as if they were still alive, cleaning them, having conversations, and asking how they are doing over there on the other side. Celebrations like Día de Los Muertos put a festive spin on engaging with death, unlike the gloomy air of the average Western funeral or remembrance service (Doughty, 2018). These are ways to hold space emotionally: creating an optimal environment for grief, where grief is not judged or bottled up, and where grievers can find new, creative, and beautiful ways to feel connected to their loss. This was especially true for Sarah after finding closure in her American social circle was unfulfilling, which led her to find peace in the culture of her heritage. This was also true for Carita Ridgway’s parents, who discovered a unique way to feel connected to their daughter’s dead body even after her cremation. Additionally, Altima’s use of glass is an excellent example of the how optimizing physical spaces can help everyday people engage with death. This was also supported in Doughty’s observation that more people attend cremations at Altima than in the average American funeral home.

Aside from leaving emotional and physical room for processing death, I feel that holding spaces should also be about leaving room in terms of open-mindedness. In the chapter “Colorado,” Doughty’s (2018) inclusion of a U.S. state in her global exploration of good death practices demonstrates the clash between discourses within the West. It raises points on the struggle to make space for death in a country that tends to keep it under wraps. In this chapter, legal conflict plays out between the Crestone End of Life Project and those who are against pyres. To offer context, Doughty (2018) describes the cremation ceremony of a 75-year-old woman, Laura, and the portable pyre: laying atop cinderblocks was a metal grate. Laying atop the metal grate was Laura. All the attendees carefully filed around or approached the structure, laying juniper branches above her wrapped body. The body was then set on fire, while the visitors could all watch from a safe distance, but could still be considered incredibly close to the flames. This is a ritual very dear and institutional to many people in the Colorado community of Crestone. Doughty’s Crestone acquaintances, Paul and Stephanie, were on a mission to find a permanent location for their portable pyre. This would make pyre cremation more stable and controlled—they could establish a set location and build a safe, appropriate burning area instead of setting up camp and preparing the land in new places again and again. Furthermore, it would give pyre cremation a home, make it feel like it had its own, important place in American society. Launching the Crestone End of Life Project, Paul and Stephanie received much support and legitimacy, but also significant resistance from landowners living near the desired perma-pyre location. Doughty (2018) describes their opponents as “uninterested” in the various evidence the pyre team collected to support itself, such as “evidence showing no threat to wildfires, unpleasant smells, mercury poisoning, or particulate matter” (p. 23).

These legal projects thrown at the Project represent more than disgruntled landowners concerned about the environment. They also represent the intolerance of American death norms against something more unusual—this is the lack of space for death, or the lack of tolerance for differing opinion. Noack and Martin’s (2019) “dividing practices” apply to the pyre problem as well, since Crestone End of Life was both legally set apart and labelled in a dehumanizing way by those with greater power (p. 53). Ironically, Doughty (2018) humanizes the pyre discourse in comparison to traditional America’s: She describes widely-used cremation as a commercial, industrial practice, while the pyre ceremony is intimate, natural, and surrounded by community. Therefore, there is nothing dehumanizing about cremation by pyre.

The West should become more open-minded to death discourses it perceives as unconventional. Again, Doughty reminds us that difference is not ugly or wrong. But Noack and Martin (2019) warn us that the West has a history of Eurocentrism and settler-colonial domination over local cultures. This history carries over today in the form of systematic judgment, othering, and quiet distaste for social difference.

Conclusion: You, Me, Us, Death

How do I shake the feeling that I should fear death? Like the West as a whole, I have my own histories, thoughts, and behaviours that will make it impossible to change my attitudes overnight, or anytime soon. I believe the best way to begin is by learning slowly, by gradual exposure.

Westerners and non-Westerners alike have their own situated knowledges of death, where it is impossible to have a full perspective of the world because humans are subjective and knowledge is infinite. Instead, every being—me, you, and everyone—is only capable of a partial perspective (Noack & Martin, 2019). Being human, Doughty (2018) will always have a partial perspective of the world, but in From Here to Eternity, she demonstrates that she has expanded her situated knowledge by immersing herself in new discourses. She has learned new cultures over the span of years, and has worked a long time to become the open-minded mortician she is today. Her objective has been to expand the perspectives of her readership as well. She has done so by illustrating conventional America as the antagonist of her book. This allows for escaping the aspects of Western death practices that many find painful, and it emphasizes that the West is a location of power that needs to be challenged in order for lesser-known discourses of the world to be seen as unique and important, rather than universally horrific and wrong.

Overall, my partial perspective is why I decided to write this paper—aside from the fact that From Here to Eternity was an assigned text for my class. I am unhappy with the way I approach death with a crippling anxiety and endless dread, and I am unhappy with how little I know about death discourses outside of my own. Fortunately, Doughty’s work has helped spark an interest in learning more about grief around the world, and it has opened a little space in my mind that leaves some room to think about death.

References

Brock, D., Martin, A., Thomas, M., & Raby, R. (2019). Introduction: Unpacking the Centre. In D. Brock, A. Martin, M. Thomas, & R. Raby (Eds.), Power and Everyday Practices (2nd ed., pp. 3-16). University of Toronto Press.

Doughty, C. (2018). From Here to Eternity. WW Norton & Company.

Noack, A. M., & Martin, A. (2019). Chapter 2: Assembling Our Toolkit. In D. Brock, A. Martin, M. Thomas, & R. Raby (Eds.), Power and Everyday Practices (2nd ed., pp. 53-73). University of Toronto Press.