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

The opening chapters introduce the book’s central critique of The Western Sanitization of Death. Doughty, a progressive funeral director, wonders how to get Americans to “show up, to be present and engaged” in deathcare and mourning (15). Her Introduction dismantles the Western idea that “we have it all right” when it comes to deathcare, while “all these ‘other people’ are disrespectful and barbarous” (14). She uses second person to speak directly to the reader, asking them to question what they find disrespectful about other cultures’ death practices and why. She writes, “Many of the rituals in this book will be very different from your own, but I hope you will see the beauty in that difference” (15). Doughty’s use of second person shows that her intended audience is people from the United States and other cultures from the West who subscribe to sanitized death practices that distance the dead from mourners. Doughty frames her exploration so that readers know what to expect and what argument she plans to make.

Throughout the next eight chapters, Doughty will cycle through diverse deathcare and funerary practices that differ from the sanitized, Western one. She models acceptance, openness, enthusiasm, and self-inquiry for her readers. Doughty always introduces ideas and stories in individual chapters using anecdotes. She begins with a specific story from her experience and uses this to broaden her discussion into larger cultural beliefs and historical framing; then, she ties this to her central argument about the perceived appropriateness of funerary practices being culturally contingent.

One of Doughty’s goals is to destigmatize interacting with dead bodies; she believes that in Western cultures, mourners and the dead are too distanced. So, in her anecdotes, she always names the people—both living and dead—whom she discusses. She often physically describes the corpses she talks about and details their personalities and biographical details. For instance, in Chapter 1, she introduces Laura, a deceased 75-year-old woman. She describes how “Laura had lived in Crestone for years” and includes personal stories about her from community members (30). These details humanize Laura. Knowing her name and details about her life helps readers see her as a nuanced individual rather than a corpse to be avoided and feared.

Doughty also uses her personalized anecdotes to speak to related cultural beliefs and historical data. She describes how Laura is being cremated in an open-air pyre, and she uses this detail to discuss the history of cremation. Though Crestone has the only “community open-air pyre in America and, in fact, in the Western world” (21), Doughty’s cultural and historical information reveals that there is nothing strange, new, or taboo about open-air cremation. She relates the story of the “Mungo Lady,” an aboriginal woman who was cremated by her community 42,000 years ago. Though people might consider industrial, commercial cremation in a closed-off facility cleaner, Doughty reveals that “[i]ndustrial, furnace cremation was first proposed in Europe in the late nineteenth century” (25). Though this is now seen as a traditional cremation, while open-air pyres like Crestone’s are seen as unusual and non-traditional, Doughty’s historical framing reveals how ideas of acceptable funerary practices are shifting and culturally contingent. Industrial cremation is only roughly 150 years old, while open-air cremations are at least 40,000 years old.

She also introduces the idea that industrialized Western death practices can be oppressive to people who live in these countries but come from diverse religions and ethnicities. She introduces the story of Pittu Laugani, a Hindu man who explains “the pain of witnessing a commercial, industrialized cremation” (37). In his belief system, the skull of a body being cremated should be cracked so that the soul can escape and move to the next world. In an industrial cremation machine’s “steel and brick-lined chamber,” he believes that a soul “will be imprisoned in the machine, forced to mingle with the thousands of other souls the machine has trapped” (37). This anecdote reveals how one culture’s death practices, when forcefully imposed on another, can be actively harmful.

Doughty often reflects on the rigidity of the American funerary business. The laws dictating what is an acceptable funerary practice are largely arbitrary. She shows that they are not driven by what is best for the environment or for the people experiencing these systems, like Pittu, but by small interest groups. Doughty relates how “government cemetery and funeral boards put up enormous resistance” to the introduction of innovative funerary practices like open-air pyres (38). The reasons they give are largely about safety, environmental impact, and cleanliness. However, projects like the Crestone End of Life Project have gathered a lot of data that disprove these claims.

Doughty points out that modern, industrial cremation machines have not been innovated since the 1870s. They each take “thousands of dollars’ worth of natural gas a month” and emit “carbon monoxide, soot, sulfur dioxide, and highly toxic mercury” into the atmosphere (27). These machines rely on fossil fuels, and while open-air cremations still release emissions, CELP uses raised pyres to consume less wood and also employs other environmentally aware measures. These data disprove the protests of funeral boards and reveal what Doughty believes is their likely motivation: money. A traditional funeral in the United States costs $8,000 to $10,000, “not including the burial plot and cemetery cost” (38). In contrast, a Crestone funeral costs only $500. One of the biggest obstacles that Doughty sees to reforming the American funeral industry is its commitment to “money and profit” (38), rather than care for the dead or their surviving loved ones.

Despite the restrictions of big funerary businesses in the United States, Americans and other people from Westernized cultures sometimes exhibit a morbid and exploitative interest in Ethical Engagement With Diverse Death Practices. In addition to relating these moments, Doughty questions her own role in this phenomenon. She begins exploring this theme in Chapter 2, in which she details her visit to Indonesia. The Torajan people developed boundaries for tourists so that they could get “close, but not too close” while observing their funeral rituals (51). This balancing act attempts to generate revenue and share their practices without compromising them. Doughty sees the Torajan funerary practice as culturally important and thinks that her ability to even be present on the outskirts is “more than fair” (51). However, she notices a German woman walking “directly into the center of the courtyard, through the unfolding festivities, taking photographs with her iPad thrust into local children’s faces” (51). Doughty finds this disrespectful and upsetting and fights the urge to “yank her out” (51). Doughty sees this woman as an example of the type of tourist who sees Cultural Diversity in Death Practices not as an important cultural practice deserving of respect but as a consumable curiosity.

Though Doughty never behaves like this woman, she wonders if she, too, is culpable of treating diverse death practices as commodities since she pushes herself into sacred spaces where her presence isn’t wanted. When she and her companion hear about the unwrapping of mummies, she reveals that they “spe[e]d in that direction,” charging through mud and sliding down embankments to get there (66). The mourners do not ask them to leave—instead, they welcome them to ask questions. However, they ask Doughty and her companion not to share the location of this “secret” place with anyone else. Immediately, Doughty wonders if she and her friend are like the German woman who intruded in the parade and if their curiosity has “driven [them] where [they] [a]ren’t wanted” (67). Ultimately, only the Torajan people themselves—or the practitioners of any given ceremony or tradition—can answer the question about who is welcome in their space. However, Doughty models the self-awareness and self-questioning that she believes tourists should have when entering spaces that do not belong to them.