Dust to Dust
This week I finished reading Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty. Doughty is a woman about my age (a "millenial"), a lover of history with a morbid sense of humor, kind of like me. Unlike me, she worked for several years as a crematory operator. And there's another big way in which she is not like me: she has been fascinated with death her whole life, and now works in what she terms "the death industry". I have to admit, I've spent a lot of time avoiding thinking about death until I read her book.
She posits something that I think is very true, however: our society in 21st century America is getting more and more disconnected with death, and it may be the root cause of a lot of our problems. As she says in the Author's Note at the beginning of the book: "We can do our best to push death to the margins, keeping corpses behind stainless-steel doors and tucking the sick and dying in hospital rooms. So masterfully do we hide death, you would almost believe we are the first generation of immortals. But we are not."
I realized as I was reading this book that although the vocation that I'm currently discerning is rather different from crematory operator, I will be someone who spends a lot of time around death. Already in my job working with the Sisters, I have been around quite a bit of death. Well, sort of. Like the quote I mentioned above, it's always kind of tucked away and so I only experience it marginally. In the past nearly five years I've worked there, many sisters have died. Because of the nature of my job and always being on the road, I haven't had a chance to attend many of the wakes or funerals for sisters I've known. Or maybe I had more opportunities than I thought, but I made excuses. I finally did last year with a sister that I had a special fondness for. I'm glad I did, because I was able to look at the mementos of her long, wonderful life and appreciate her, and to get a chance to face those emotions I usually try to run away from. I allowed myself to cry.
Caitlin Doughty has a definite opinion about the way funerals are usually done in the U.S. They are over commercialized and gloss over the truth of what death is. Embalming and cremation, the two standard ways of dealing with a corpse, ensure that decay – the natural process by which we return to the dust from which we were created – does not happen. Doughty feels that this comes from a fear of losing control. “Death denial”, as she calls it, is why we spend “over $100 billion a year on anti-aging products as 3.1 million children under five starve to death.”
I promise this post isn’t going to turn into a book review. Maybe a book recommendation (you should totally read this book). But I realized that the author’s aversion to embalming and steering clear of death via euphemisms (“she passed away”) is about the search for truth and meaning in a world that seems to be increasingly artificial. Doughty sees the importance of ritual when it comes to death, and by so doing she acknowledges that we human beings need that. We need ritual, we need meaning. We need truth. She and I are part of a generation that seems to be increasingly distant from religious faith as our parents knew it, and yet we are also incredibly interested in spirituality. Another book I’ve been reading recently is Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. In the last chapter he talks about the challenges of the future, and he says he was fascinated by a Pew Forum report that showed “even though the Millenial Generation has the lowest level of religious affiliation of any generation in history, their interest in spiritual practice and their curiosity about the spiritual journey is much higher than that of their elders.” We are surrounded by marketing schemes. Even in death one can’t escape being part of some industry. I think what can be gleaned from the two very different books I just finished is that people, those of my generation and younger specifically, are thirsty for the truth.
I hope that if I am truly called to the priesthood and am someday ordained, that I can walk with people in those moments when they must face their own death or that of those they love. I hope that I can convey the deep truth of the steadfast love of God and the hope of the Resurrection without turning it into a farce that sounds hollow. I attended a funeral a few months ago for a man who was tragically killed in a hunting accident. The pastor who presided over the service was a very “born-again”, evangelical type of preacher. He said things like “I’m not sad, I’m rejoicing that he was born again and is in heaven with Jesus!” I couldn’t help but look at the man’s two teenage sons and think, that’s probably small comfort to them. Jesus himself, even though he was about to resurrect his friend Lazarus, wept when he faced his tomb (John 11:35). Jesus acknowledged that death exists, and that grief is real. He is, after all, the Truth, as well as the Resurrection and the Life. I believe in the Resurrection. I don’t think it’s a metaphor or allegory, I believe it to be the truth. But I also believe that before you can get to Easter Sunday, you have to experience Good Friday. Death must be faced and accepted, not tucked away because it’s unseemly.
One of the sisters who died in the past couple of years opted for a “green funeral.” No metal casket or embalming fluid, just her body returning to the Earth and being part of the cycle of life. I personally love the idea, and I know other people who have said they would like to have a green funeral. Maybe our generation will make it a trend to face the truth of our mortality and the interconnectedness of our bodies with the rest of creation. Caitlin Doughty wants a green burial, because “I understood that I had been given my atoms, the ones that made up my heart and toenails and kidneys and brain, on a kind of universal loan program. The time would come when I would have to give the atoms back.” Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
She posits something that I think is very true, however: our society in 21st century America is getting more and more disconnected with death, and it may be the root cause of a lot of our problems. As she says in the Author's Note at the beginning of the book: "We can do our best to push death to the margins, keeping corpses behind stainless-steel doors and tucking the sick and dying in hospital rooms. So masterfully do we hide death, you would almost believe we are the first generation of immortals. But we are not."
I realized as I was reading this book that although the vocation that I'm currently discerning is rather different from crematory operator, I will be someone who spends a lot of time around death. Already in my job working with the Sisters, I have been around quite a bit of death. Well, sort of. Like the quote I mentioned above, it's always kind of tucked away and so I only experience it marginally. In the past nearly five years I've worked there, many sisters have died. Because of the nature of my job and always being on the road, I haven't had a chance to attend many of the wakes or funerals for sisters I've known. Or maybe I had more opportunities than I thought, but I made excuses. I finally did last year with a sister that I had a special fondness for. I'm glad I did, because I was able to look at the mementos of her long, wonderful life and appreciate her, and to get a chance to face those emotions I usually try to run away from. I allowed myself to cry.
Caitlin Doughty has a definite opinion about the way funerals are usually done in the U.S. They are over commercialized and gloss over the truth of what death is. Embalming and cremation, the two standard ways of dealing with a corpse, ensure that decay – the natural process by which we return to the dust from which we were created – does not happen. Doughty feels that this comes from a fear of losing control. “Death denial”, as she calls it, is why we spend “over $100 billion a year on anti-aging products as 3.1 million children under five starve to death.”
I promise this post isn’t going to turn into a book review. Maybe a book recommendation (you should totally read this book). But I realized that the author’s aversion to embalming and steering clear of death via euphemisms (“she passed away”) is about the search for truth and meaning in a world that seems to be increasingly artificial. Doughty sees the importance of ritual when it comes to death, and by so doing she acknowledges that we human beings need that. We need ritual, we need meaning. We need truth. She and I are part of a generation that seems to be increasingly distant from religious faith as our parents knew it, and yet we are also incredibly interested in spirituality. Another book I’ve been reading recently is Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. In the last chapter he talks about the challenges of the future, and he says he was fascinated by a Pew Forum report that showed “even though the Millenial Generation has the lowest level of religious affiliation of any generation in history, their interest in spiritual practice and their curiosity about the spiritual journey is much higher than that of their elders.” We are surrounded by marketing schemes. Even in death one can’t escape being part of some industry. I think what can be gleaned from the two very different books I just finished is that people, those of my generation and younger specifically, are thirsty for the truth.
I hope that if I am truly called to the priesthood and am someday ordained, that I can walk with people in those moments when they must face their own death or that of those they love. I hope that I can convey the deep truth of the steadfast love of God and the hope of the Resurrection without turning it into a farce that sounds hollow. I attended a funeral a few months ago for a man who was tragically killed in a hunting accident. The pastor who presided over the service was a very “born-again”, evangelical type of preacher. He said things like “I’m not sad, I’m rejoicing that he was born again and is in heaven with Jesus!” I couldn’t help but look at the man’s two teenage sons and think, that’s probably small comfort to them. Jesus himself, even though he was about to resurrect his friend Lazarus, wept when he faced his tomb (John 11:35). Jesus acknowledged that death exists, and that grief is real. He is, after all, the Truth, as well as the Resurrection and the Life. I believe in the Resurrection. I don’t think it’s a metaphor or allegory, I believe it to be the truth. But I also believe that before you can get to Easter Sunday, you have to experience Good Friday. Death must be faced and accepted, not tucked away because it’s unseemly.
One of the sisters who died in the past couple of years opted for a “green funeral.” No metal casket or embalming fluid, just her body returning to the Earth and being part of the cycle of life. I personally love the idea, and I know other people who have said they would like to have a green funeral. Maybe our generation will make it a trend to face the truth of our mortality and the interconnectedness of our bodies with the rest of creation. Caitlin Doughty wants a green burial, because “I understood that I had been given my atoms, the ones that made up my heart and toenails and kidneys and brain, on a kind of universal loan program. The time would come when I would have to give the atoms back.” Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
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