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A Mortician Talks Openly About Death, And Wants You To, Too

Talking about death isn't easy, but mortician Caitlin Doughty is trying to reform how we think about the deaths of loved ones — and prepare for our own.

"My philosophy is honesty," Doughty tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I think that we've been so hidden from death in this culture for such a long time that it's very refreshing and liberating to talk about death in an open, honest manner."

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

And Other Lessons from the Crematory

by Caitlin Doughty

Hardcover, 256 pages | purchase

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TitleSmoke Gets in Your EyesSubtitleAnd Other Lessons from the CrematoryAuthorCaitlin Doughty

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Doughty is the founder of The Order of the Good Death, a group of funeral industry professionals, academics and artists who focus on the rituals families perform with their dead and how the industry disposes of dead bodies. She is also starting her own funeral service in Los Angeles, called Undertaking L.A., that will help families with planning after they lose a family member.

Doughty's new memoir, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory, serves as, among other things, a way for her to cope with working with dead bodies.

"I write a lot because it can take a lot out of you — especially if you consider the job as more than just a trade," Doughty says. "Not only are you dealing with the dead bodies; you're dealing with the incredible sorrow of the families and the fact that they can get very mad at you. ... They're angry that somebody has died and they're looking for somebody to take it out on."

Doughty says she hopes to educate people on the inevitable. On her video series, Ask a Mortician, she answers questions on a wide range of subjects including home death, pet death, necrophilia and what happens to breast implants and titanium hip replacements after a body is cremated. Her Wednesday Addams style and energetic personality is part of what draws viewers.

"I think that humor gets people to watch them; I think cultural references get people to watch them; I think me being friendly and young gets people to watch them," she says. "I'm passionate about presenting it in a way that makes people consider it — and makes people not afraid of it."

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Caitlin Doughty is the founder of The Order of the Good Death, a group of funeral industry professionals, academics and artists who focus on the rituals families perform with their dead. Mara Zehler/Courtesy of W.W. Norton & Co. Inc. hide caption

itoggle caption Mara Zehler/Courtesy of W.W. Norton & Co. Inc.

Caitlin Doughty is the founder of The Order of the Good Death, a group of funeral industry professionals, academics and artists who focus on the rituals families perform with their dead.

Mara Zehler/Courtesy of W.W. Norton & Co. Inc.

Interview Highlights

On how she once romanticized crematory work, and how that compared with reality

I think it was probably more romantic than it actually ended up being. I thought of the idea of ... the open-air pyre and leading the body to it and placing it on the pyre and everybody's weeping and it's beautiful. But the reality that I found is that modern crematories are really industrial environments and the body goes into large industrial machines and oftentimes I was the only one there. And it's hot and it's dirty and you get covered in dust [ashes] as you're working.

[The ashes] are inorganic bone fragments, which means that the organic material that is the body — which is your organs, your flesh, the clothes that you're wearing — all burn up. And what's left is inorganic bone and that's what we actually know of as "ashes." And there's so much of it that it can, when you're taking it out of the machine, get on you and get into strange little places that you didn't even know you had.

On the emotional impact of working with bodies

You get used to it, in a way. I don't mean that you get callous, but it becomes a reality of your workplace because if you really took it in in the sense of thinking, "Ahh, this is the dust of a man who is no longer here. We are all mortal!" — if you did that every morning with your cup of coffee, while you were cremating your first body, you wouldn't be able to do the work.

You really have to look past that and really see it as an occupational hazard. That doesn't mean that working with the bodies and working with the family loses its impact over time, but it just means you can't take in the full existential despair of it every time or you just wouldn't be able to come to work every day.

“ When I was working at the crematory, the most shocking thing to me wasn't so much the decomposing bodies or the strange bodies that I saw, it really was that I was alone there. And I was sending all of these people off to their final disposition in the crematorium machine ... and it didn't feel right because I didn't know these people.

On what she would like to see done differently in cremation

If I could see anything change it would be the level of involvement of the family in the death rituals. Because, when I was working at the crematory, the most shocking thing to me wasn't so much the decomposing bodies or the strange bodies that I saw, it really was that I was alone there. And I was sending all of these people off to their final disposition in the crematorium machine and there was no one there and it didn't feel right because I didn't know these people. And it was an honor and I took it very seriously.

But the time when families did come — and that's called a "witness cremation," which is something you can ask for at your local crematory or funeral home — when ... the family was there and they sat with the body and they took the time and they pushed the button to send the body into the flames; it was an incredibly powerful experience because they took responsibility for that body. And they took responsibility for that death and for that loss to the community, and that to me is the thing that we've lost and it's most crucial that we get back.

On using more natural alternatives for burial

'A Chosen Exile': Black People Passing In White America

Several years ago, Stanford historian Allyson Hobbs was talking with a favorite aunt, who was also the family storyteller. Hobbs learned that she had a distant cousin whom she'd never met nor heard of.

Which is exactly the way the cousin wanted it.

Hobbs' cousin had been living as white, far away in California, since she'd graduated from high school. This was at the insistence of her mother.

"She was black, but she looked white," Hobbs said. "And her mother decided it was in her best interest to move far away from Chicago, to Los Angeles, and to assume the life of a white woman."

"Her mother really felt that this was the very best thing she could do for her daughter," Hobbs continued. "She felt this was a way to offer opportunities to her daughter that she wouldn't have living as a black woman on the South Side of Chicago."

A scene from Imitation of Life, a 1934 film starring Fredi Washington playing a black woman who passes as white. Wikimedia Commons hide caption

itoggle caption Wikimedia Commons

In California, the young woman passed as white. She married a white man, and they had children who never knew they had black blood. Then, one day, years later, her phone rang.

It was the woman's mother with distressing news: Her father was dying, and she needed to return home immediately to tell him goodbye.

The cousin replied, "I can't. I'm a white woman now."

She missed her father's funeral, and never saw her mother or siblings again.

Hobbs was haunted by the story, and constantly went back to it in her mind. It made her realize that all the tales she'd heard about passing over the years involved the gains that people expected for leaving their black identity behind. But through her research, she came to understand there was another, critical part of the experience:

"To write a history of passing is to write a history of loss."

'Who Are Your People?'

Loss of self. Loss of family. Loss of community. Loss of the ability to answer honestly the question black people have been asking each other since before Emancipation: "Who are your people?"

"The family jokes, the oral history every family has, and repeats and passes down," Hobbs muses, "those things are lost to people who pass." She figured if she had a passing story in her family, there must be many other families who did, too.

Hobbs began writing about passing for her doctoral dissertation, and was encouraged to turn it into a book. The dissertation became A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in America. It's a history of passing told through the lens of personal stories.

Once Hobbs began researching, the stories came thick and fast. There was New Yorker Theophilus McKee, who'd chosen to live as a white man for all of his adult life. That's until he stepped forward to claim a huge inheritance as the only colored descendant of Negro Civil War veteran Col. John McKee. His claim and the court fight with his biracial siblings made national news.

There's the story of Harry S. Murphy, who was assigned as a ROTC cadet to the University of Mississippi by a commander who assumed Murphy was white. "For a year, Harry had a ball at Ole Miss," Hobbs laughs. "He ran track, dated white girls and was known as a terrific dancer." Years later, the university fought to keep James Meredith from registering as its first black student, Harry Murphy gleefully broke the news: "Ole Miss was fighting a battle they had no idea they'd lost years ago."

Then there's the sad tale of Elsie Roxborough, a beauty from a distinguished Detroit family who became the first black girl to live in a dorm at the University of Michigan. She tried acting in California, then moved to New York to live as a white woman. When her disapproving father refused to support her, Roxborough — then known as Mona Manet — committed suicide. Her grieving and equally pale sister passed as a white woman to claim the body, so Roxborough's secret wouldn't be given away. Her death certificate declared she was white.

A Bend Back Toward Community?

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Harvard University Press

Hobbs says one of the things she learned as she delved deeper into her research was that passing was not a solitary act. It required other people who were willing to keep your secret, and a community that was willing to let you go and look the other way, even when it hurt.

In 1952, Jet magazine published an article predicting that passing was on the wane, at least for solvent black folks. "Most economically-sound Negroes who could 'pass' prefer being high-class Negroes to low-class whites," it opined.

Jet had jumped the gun a bit: Passing did not become pass for many more years. It's mostly viewed as a practice that belongs to a more sharply segmented racial past. The rise of a more diverse America, and a growing multicultural movement that insists on people's right to recognize all of their ethnicity, has helped racial passing pass into history.

'The Flash' And 'Gotham' Succeed By Taking Comic Book Stories Seriously

As The CW's new superhero series The Flash debuts tonight, it seems there are more TV shows based on comic books in prime time than ever before.

And a look at two of the best new network TV dramas this fall also reveals two different ways to tell superhero stories on television, both with wonderful results.

It's tough to find a more traditional superhero story than The CW's take on The Flash, which opens with a voice over from the hero himself:

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Deggans Picks 'Gotham,' 'Black-ish,' 'The Flash' Among Fall TV's Best

"To understand what I'm about to tell you, you need to do something first ... you need to believe in the impossible," he says, preparing the audience for a few shots of him speeding across town at supersonic speed.

In the comics, Barry Allen is a forensic scientist who gets covered in chemicals after a lightning bolt hits his lab. And that's pretty much how The CW's TV version goes, too.

When Allen wakes up nine months later with the gift of superspeed, a couple of scientist sidekicks explain what happened and help him understand his new powers.

"You got struck by lightning, dude," says Carlos Valdes as Cisco Ramon, the tech-oriented engineering genius who eventually invents his friction-resistant uniform. Later, he tells him, "you thought the world was slowing down; it wasn't. You were moving so fast, it only looked like everyone else was standing still."

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Grant Gustin as Barry Allen on The Flash. Jack Rowand/The CW hide caption

itoggle caption Jack Rowand/The CW

Grant Gustin as Barry Allen on The Flash.

Jack Rowand/The CW

Star Grant Gustin has boy-band-ready good looks and an earnest energy; just what we expect from a hero like Barry Allen. There are no clumsy attempts to make his story more sophisticated — The Flash is just a good-guy hero chasing bad guys in a story that's half police procedural and half superhero fantasy.

It works well. But what's also amazing here is that The Flash is completely different from fall TV's other great comic book series, Fox's Gotham.

Fox's show is a Batman series without the guy in the black battle suit. It starts with the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents when he's 12 years old. A principled rookie detective named James Gordon takes the case and tries to comfort him.

"When I was about your age, drunk driver hit our car, killed my dad," Ben McKenzie's Gordon tells Bruce Wayne, played by David Mazouz. "I know how you feel right now. But I promise you, however dark and scary the world might be right now: There will be light."

Gotham is many things: a noirish police drama about the rise of a good cop in a bad town. The story of a little kid who pushes himself to become a superhero. An origin tale for villains from Batman lore, including an early version of The Penguin and a new crime boss played by Jada Pinkett Smith, Fish Mooney.

The show stitches together pieces of past Batman versions into a new story. It has the gritty feel of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight movies — including crime bosses named Falcone and Moroni — but a touch of the timeless goofiness from Tim Burton's Batman, with flip cellphones and cars straight from the '70s.

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Jada Pinkett Smith (second from right) stars in Fox's Gotham along with John Doman (from left), Camren Bicondova and Robin Lord Taylor. Fox TV hide caption

itoggle caption Fox TV

Jada Pinkett Smith (second from right) stars in Fox's Gotham along with John Doman (from left), Camren Bicondova and Robin Lord Taylor.

Fox TV

A drama like this is heaven for comic book geeks, especially when you consider that the first Batman many fans saw on TV was Adam West's campy take on the Caped Crusader.

"Holy cliffhangers, Batman!" Burt Ward would shout while playing Robin, stuck in one of 1,000 elaborate traps laid for the Dynamic Duo in their 1966 live action series. (Turns out, Batman used complex math to figure a way out of the trap, yet again.)

Back in the 1960s, superheroes were mostly a joke, leaping around in tights and launching cartoon graphics with every punch. And it didn't get much better a decade later, when The Incredible Hulk's alter ego, David Banner, chased off a nosy reporter with a classic line.

"Mr. McGee, don't make me angry," Bill Bixby's Banner told the sneaky reporter, who always seemed on the verge of discovering that he could turn into a giant green rage monster. "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

Decades later, comic book series like The Flash and Gotham succeed because they take comic storytelling seriously. Classic comics offer stories refined over many decades, with characters that have evolved as times change.

These new TV series treat that history as important building blocks, with extra nods to the classic storylines for fans who are paying attention (Easter egg hunters, look for the shot of a mangled cage in tonight's Flash episode).

That's why I don't worry when others complain about the growing number of superhero-themed TV shows: If every series turns out as well as The Flash and Gotham, this comic book geek is ready to see a lot more.

A Mortician Talks Openly About Death, And Wants You To, Too

Talking about death isn't easy, but mortician Caitlin Doughty is trying to reform how we think about the deaths of loved ones — and prepare for our own.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

And Other Lessons from the Crematory

by Caitlin Doughty

Hardcover, 256 pages | purchase

Purchase Featured Book

TitleSmoke Gets in Your EyesSubtitleAnd Other Lessons from the CrematoryAuthorCaitlin Doughty

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?

Amazon

iBooks

Independent Booksellers

Nonfiction

Biography & Memoir

Most Recent Posts

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A Mortician Talks Openly About Death, And Wants You To, Too

'A Chosen Exile': Black People Passing In White America

'The Flash' And 'Gotham' Succeed By Taking Comic Book Stories Seriously

A Mortician Talks Openly About Death, And Wants You To, Too

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