Caitlin Doughty has been cutting pacemakers out of corpses, grinding bones by hand and loading bodies into cremation chambers for seven years. But the 30-year-old Los Angeles-based mortician doesn't want to keep the fun to herself: she thinks we should all have more face time with the dead. In her book,Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, out October 17, Doughty argues for more acceptance of death --and tries to spark a wave of amateur undertaking.
WIRED: You're saying that people should handle their loved ones' bodies? Can we do that?
Caitlin Doughty: Most people think dead bodies are dangerous or that they're required to hire a funeral director to prepare a body. I'm a licensed mortician, but I want to teach people that they don't need me. If you're keeping the body at home, you could put dry ice around it and that would last for a couple of days without any problems. You only need to hire a professional for a cremation or cemetery burial.
But... why would anyone want that? We don't see dead bodies any more. You have to talk about death if you take care of bodies yourself. But when a group of professionals comes in and takes the body away and then sells it back to you a couple of days later, nobody has any proof that we're going to die. It's become this taboo, hidden thing.
Pristine, embalmed corpses don't help us embrace death, do they?
A chemically preserved body looks like a wax replica of a person.
Bodies are supposed to droop and turn pale and sink in while decomposing. Within a day or so after they've died, you should be able to see that this person has very much left the building.
That's the point. I think dead bodies should look dead. It helps with the grieving process.
What do you want to happen to your body after you die? I want a natural burial -- straight into the ground in a shroud. But that's because what's not legal yet is having your body laid above ground for animals to consume. I would love to be eaten by animals, because I eat animals and I'm an animal, and when I die they get to eat me. That seems only fair.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
