Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory

I sat next to Howard J. Flannery for so long that the fog lifted. The full moon stood out crisp and white and thousands of stars appeared against the black sky.

It was complete, silver silence. Not a cricket, not a breath of wind, just the moon and the old headstones. I thought of the things that culture teaches us to fear about a being in a cemetery at night. A floating specter appearing, its demon red eyes aglow. A zombie pushing its bloated, decaying hand out of a nearby grave. Organ music swelling, owls hooting, gates creaking. They seemed like cheap gimmicks; any one of them would have shattered the stillness and perfection of death. Maybe we create the gimmicks precisely for that reason, because the stillness itself is too difficult to contemplate.

At the moment I was alive with blood coursing through my veins, floating above the putrefaction below, many potential tomorrows on my mind. Yes, my projects could lie fragmented and unfinished after my death. Unable to choose how I would die physically, I could only choose how I would die mentally. Whether my mortality caught me at twenty-eight or ninety-three, I made the choice to die content, slipped into the nothingness, my atoms becoming the very fog that cloaked the trees. The silence of death, of the cemetery, was no punishment, but a reward for a life well lived.





Acknowledgments




It takes a village to raise a death book. Is this a thing people say? It should be. If you’ll indulge me, there are people to whom tremendous credit is due.

The wonderful team at W. W. Norton, so good at their jobs it makes me uncomfortable. Ryan Harrington, Steve Colca, Erin Sinesky-Lovett, Elisabeth Kerr, and countless others.

Special thanks to Tom Mayer, my editor, who never coddled me and took stern issue with my adverbs. Bless you and your children’s children, Tom Mayer.

The Ross Yoon Agency, especially Anna Sproul-Latimer, who did coddle me, holding my hand like a wee babe in the woods through all parts of this process.

My parents John & Stephanie Doughty, upstanding folk who love and support their daughter even when she’s chosen a life-in-death. Mom, I’m probably not going to win that Oscar . . . so this is it.

I’m loath to think of the poor-sad-no-good-pathetic thing I would be without David Forrest and Mara Zehler.

I realize this book makes it seem like I have no friends. I do, uh . . . promise. They are brilliant, thoughtful people all over the world who went, “You’re going to be a mortician? Yeah, that makes sense.”

Some of those friends were the keen eyes that read and reread this bloated beast through years of drafts: Will C White, Will Slocombe, Sarah Fornace, Alex Frankel, and Usha Herold Jenkins.

Bianca Daalder-van Iersel and Jillien Kahn, both of whom did great things to keep my brain intact and functioning. Paola Caceres, who provided the same service in mortuary school.

Lawyer-extraordinaire Evan Hess, for keeping me out of real bad things.

The members of the Order of the Good Death and the alternative death community at large, who inspire me daily to do better work.

Dodai Stewart at Jezebel, a big reason people care.

Finally, the men who ushered me into the death industry and taught me how to be an ethical, hard-working funeral director: Michael Tom, Chris Reynolds, Bruce Williams, and Jason Bruce. To be honest, it wasn’t until I was out in the cold, harsh death world that I realized just how good I had it at the safe, professional, and well-run funeral home I’ve called Westwind.





Notes on Sources




The Caribbean American writer Audre Lorde wrote, “There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.” Writing this book was a six-year exercise in taking ideas from philosophers and historians, mixing them with my own experience working in death, and attempting to make them, somehow, felt.

Many of the texts that had a huge influence are only cited briefly in the final book. Please visit the original texts, especially those of Ernest Becker, Philippe Ariès, Joseph Campbell, Caroline Walker Bynum, and Viktor Frankl. It will do wonders to advance your relationship with death and mortality.

While working at the crematory I kept a secret blog called Salon of Souls, which caught me as I was in 2008, and didn’t allow me to revise history.

I was fortunate in having the full support of my coworkers at the crematory: Michael, Chris, and Bruce. Not only did they allow me to use their real names, they agreed to sit down for interviews and multiple follow-ups as the book was written. I hope my tremendous respect for these men and what they do comes across as you read.

Through the Order of the Good Death, I am lucky to know the best death academics and funeral professionals working today. Their access to resource libraries, real-world experience, and large pools of arcane and morbid knowledge has been invaluable.


AUTHOR’S NOTE

Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973.

Wales, Henry G. “Death Comes to Mata Hari.” International News Service, October 19, 1917.





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