I bought a book about being a crematorium operator

How to survive being swallowed by a whale, how to survive falling into quicksand, how to survive a tsunami and how to survive a polar bear attack. This is what YouTube is suggesting to me, despite me constantly clicking the ‘I am not interested button’. The internet is forcing me to face the fact that I am mortal and there is nothing I can do about it.

Why did google suggest to me to watch a video about surviving a polar bear attack? I suspect they listened to my conversation with my boss where we were talking about a boy being swallowed by a polar bear. Or maybe they heard me talking about my fear of death and my constant preoccupations about the pain of existence?

While I finally decide to open one of these videos, I am reminded of the Book. The book I ordered almost one month ago from which I initially only read three pages. Not because I was not interested (because I can guarantee that the first page was the most interesting thing I have ever read) but because I realised I bought something that was not in my budget just because all of a sudden, that is the only thing that google was advertising to me.

‘Smoke gets in your eyes’ by Caitlin Doughty, the lady with long black hair and a fringe that talks about death and the funeral home industry, in depth and without tears, on YouTube.

When I started reading more pages of the book, more memories came to my mind and I started to remember all the people that crossed my path and that are no longer with me.

I particularly remember one of the first conversations I had about death. I was at my aunt’s house, who used to live in the city centre and she had a neighbour, an old lady, who always gave my sisters and I candies. What I noticed about her house was the amount of paintings portraying the same person.

One day she started talking to us about the person in the painting. He was her son, who tragically died in a river, in an attempt to save a young lady in danger. I was deeply sad about what she told me and could not understand how it was possible, that an actual person was no longer alive.

Another conversation I had about death was less sentimental and it was more about acceptance. I remember this old lady who told me ‘there are more dead than alive’. In fact we spoke about the amount of societies, families and people who lived on planet earth. From the ancient Greeks, to the Romans, to the African tribes and the indigenous people.

I am really enjoying reading this book as she also talks about the moment in her childhood where she realised that the ultimate fate for all was death, sheer terror and morbid curiosity invaded her mind.

When I started watching her YouTube videos I was truly amazed by the way she was talking about the topic of death. She was talking about it in such a natural way and in a way that did not feel like a burden to me. In fact, most of the times someone talks about death to me I feel extremely uncomfortable and out of place, because, indeed, it is a very destructive and painful topic, for the ones who have experienced grief.

When I attended my first funeral, I was a child. I did not really understand what was going on but I started to think about the people who were actually dressing the corpses for the funeral.

In the first chapter of her book, named ‘shaving Byron’ Caitlin Doughty talks about her first experience getting a corpse ‘ ready’ and her asking herself whether the family of the old man were aware of the fact that a person with no experience at all was getting the corpse ‘ready’.

The process of getting the corpse ‘ready’ is simply the act of making the body presentable, so that the family can pronounce their last goodbye and talk with their newly deceased loved ones. This includes washing the body, dressing it up and shaving off the beard.

For me, reading about this was really interesting as I used to think about crematorium operators as experts at their jobs, however, everyone must start at some point.

Being a crematorium operator, working at a mortuary, cremating bodies and literally shaving them. It is a new experience for anyone who starts.

Caitlin Doughty talks about her sink or swim philosophy. You either learn how to do it or you don’t. The same way it is life. There is a constant battle between life and death and we have to learn how to grief without losing our sanity.

I think adding this book to my chart was an amazing choice and when it arrived I was extremely happy despite knowing it was out of budget. It’s not expensive at all, but this year I was really trying to stay within my monthly budget and every excess seems like a failure to me. However, this book was definitely one of the best things I randomly added to my chart.

Sometimes buying random objects can really be the best choice ever. Not everything has to be planned and you could actually end up buying something you need. I didn’t understand how much I needed to reflect on my fear of death and all the preoccupations that surrounds this fear. It was really helpful to find an author that experienced the same preoccupation as a child and how this led her to explore necrology services and the philosophy that surrounds it.