From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

Content Warning: This section discusses death, abortion, and death by suicide. Funeral practices and postmortem bodily phenomena are described in detail. 

Doughty relates an anecdote about when a hospice nurse called her about a recently deceased patient named Josephine, whose daughter wanted to keep her body at home. The nurse was skeptical that this was legal, but Doughty says that she encourages this practice. Doughty reveals that she is part of a group of “younger, progressive morticians” who run their funeral homes contrary to the “big business” practices of the American death industry (2).

Doughty recalls a story from when she was working at a crematorium and rented a hut from a man named Luciano in rural Belize. Luciano told her that his community discussed death all the time, including what they want to happen to their bodies after death. Doughty explains that she has long been curious about why Americans are so reluctant to discuss death, and she realizes that turning to other cultures’ death practices is a good way to show people how to deal with death openly. 

Doughty recounts several historical examples of moments when one culture’s death rituals appeared “savage” to another.