On Caitlin Doughty's Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and My Struggle with Mortality

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Amazing! Fascinating. Thought Provoking. Moving. And so very Necessary. I think the fact that it took me a couple of weeks to even get up the courage and watch an Ask a Mortician Youtube video says a lot about how much I needed this book.

I vividly remember the very moment I realized that we are all gonna die some day and how I immediatly wished to unknow this again. Of course this is the kind of thing you can never unknow again. And thus I have been struggling with mortality ever since my kindergarten days - having panic attacks on a semi-regular basis. And I waited for a good day – a day I would be able to handle these videos without plunging into another panic attack. I need not have been so worried. In fact, I could have spared myself a lot of anguish had I just gotten up the courage to look sooner. Because as it turns out the only thing that really helps with the things that you can not unknow is to know more.

And yet the approach the western world in general and - as Caitlin Doughty illustrates - america in particular takes is quite the opposite. We do everything in our power to avoid any confrontation with death. We avoid talking about it as much as possible. We hide dead bodies off stage behind the curtain. We even try to find the “cure” for it. As a history student I am well aware how bizarre it is that I managed to be alive for almost 29 years without ever having seen a dead person – even though I have been to more funerals than weddings. But the thing is, in Germany, too, these things are more like memorials nowadays. There is no dead body at a funeral anymore – only a closed coffin or an urn. And nothing actually gets buried.

So death in effect has been reduced to the absence of a person in our lives as opposed to the absence of life in a body. Without this book it never would have occurred to me how much of a difference this little distinction makes. Now I see how grossly I have misinterpreted the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and how much we have become like the petty gods of the Iliad. I am serious. When you really think about it you'll have to admit that people in modern western societies have a lot more in common with the gods in that story than with the humans. That is because we seem to think ourselves at least potentially immortal. So deeply are we in denial about our own mortality. Yet we still die. And every time we do we experience it as essentially unnatural. Death is not part of our life. It is a glitch. We don't see it as something that needs to be accepted, but as something that needs to be fixed.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is the account of Caitlin Doughty's own journey towards an understanding of death and how contemporary America and by extension western societies chose to deal with it. She shows how flawed and unhealthy these attitudes really are, how they evolved alongside the rise of the funeral industry and our euphoria in face of the great advances in public health and medicine, and how we would profit from a more realistic understanding of and engagement with death. I very am glad that I got to vicariously experience this journey through the guidance of her kind and witty words. I laughed and I cried (did not have a panic attack) and I think it is fair to say that this book changed my life.



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Letter to Myself

Dear Ponderanza,

It's been entirely too long since you have written anything on here. It's not like you don't have anything to show for your absence. You somehow managed pass your ancient Greek course as well as your final exams and wrote a pretty good thesis. But it has been three months since you handed that in. Then what?

Well, once you were finally free from work and had reconnected with your life, you found yourself staring into the impenetrable void that is your life after university. The only certainty on the horizon right now is your eventual demise, which seems uncomfortably close with nothing to block your view. You told yourself you were prepared for that. But you were kidding yourself. No, you were not prepared for this view. You were not prepared for the anxiety creeping over every aspect of your life. And you were certainly not prepared for the self doubt and feelings of inadequacy.

So you froze. You did not pick up your pen. You let your fears guide you instead. You know that those self serving monsters advise you ill. They stifle all your creativity and they will destroy what you worked so hard to build, if you let them. So there is nothing for it. You just have to pick up your pen again and write something. Even if it is just a shabby little letter to yourself.

Love Ninette

     

On Never Ever Growing Up

I very vividly remember how I told my mom one night when she was tugging me in that I never ever wanted to grow up. And this was not just me being hung up on Peter Pan. I actually meant it ... and I kind of still do.

Back then there were just so many things about grown-ups I was terrified of and things they did I thought I could never do on my own. Like doing my hair and driving a car or dancing in public (unchoreographed that is, like in a club) and all that stuff in between. But bid by bid I learned to do those things or had those experiences and it turns out that some of them are actually a lot of fun.

So do I feel like a grown up now? No. Not yet. And I am actually starting to suspect that I never will. It seems like for every milestone I leave behind another two are rising up before me. Life apparently is not the kind of game where you reach the final level and you have won. There will always be new challenges to tackle. Challenges that are going to make me feel like that scared little child over and over again. Maybe a child that is a little more mature than it's younger version, but a child nonetheless.

So the number of my age gets farther and farther removed from the age I feel. To the effect that I now earn alarmed looks whenever I have to actually think a moment to give my age or even get it wrong. Except today on my birthday, when I will be very aware and weirded out by that stranger of a number.

  

Me and Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I have got to say up front that Mrs. Dalloway put me through the most difficult reading process I ever made it through (and I have read a lot of academic texts, Egyptian tomb inscriptions and stuff). That was not because it is a bad book. It is because Mrs. Dalloway is not so much a book in the conventional sense with plot and such. It is basically a herd of consciousnesses invading your mind and running rampant. It is often hard to follow whose head you just switched into. It is somewhat like what I imagine being a mind reader must feel like. It's so utterly exhausting; like you wouldn't believe. I had to stop and take a break about every 30 pages and re-motivate myself to move on.

But while it was painful and hard to get through, it was also very rewarding and worth the effort in the end. It is hard to believe that this was first published in 1925. I mean, for example, how could this women so accurately (from what I understand at least) describe PTSD and recognize it as the serious illness that it is - long before it even became a diagnosis? And how come that it took the medical community so much longer to come to that same conclusion? (Their arrogance again and again their stupid arrogance. Like Woolf rightly recognized. And most infuriatingly still, they just don't learn from that mistake ever, it seems. Not from this. Not from the whole “gentlemen's-hands” debacle. Never. But I digress.)

All that would have been remarkable enough on it's own, but that is actually not the only issue she is surprisingly spot on about – again especially considering when this was written. She manages to step into the heads of all these characters and accurately portray them; young and old, male and female, everyone unique and life-like (i.e. with real issues); it's baffling. It makes me wonder if my paranoia about some people maybe being able to read my thoughts might have been justified after all …



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On Grief

Grief is a somewhat curious process. It is definitely not this step by step process they say it is. It's not like you master one level and go on to the next. At least for me it is not. What really happens is more like flipping back and forth between the stages. Like you think you grasp this new reality now and you're mind is otherwise occupied for a while or you sleep, but then you look up and - wham - it hits you again and you are right back where you started.

Then you are back to asking yourself if this really is the new reality now? If this is a world now in which this person no longer exists? Or if it has all just been a bad dream? Which might sound like a horrible cliche, but it is how I feel - or at least the most fitting articulation of this feeling that I can think of. Or maybe I think of it, precisely because it is such a cliche and my mind is just so occupied processing the new reality and in no condition to come up with more original expressions.

However that may be, it is not the worst part of the experience. The worst part is not even the guilt about all the bad things you ever thought or said about them. That will go away pretty soon. No, the worst part is the self-deprecating question of whether or not you were close or invested enough to justify your pain – no matter how close or closely related you actually where, I might add. And I don't know if this is just me or if other people feel this as well, because this is the particular monster I never dare to touch upon in conversations. Funerals are the habitats it really thrives in - among all those other people and their pain and anecdotes about things you were hitherto totally oblivious about - there and then it gets its biggest growth spurt. And this monster stays with you even after the worst of the pain has passed. And its company makes the next of its kind thrive even better. Maybe that is one reason why I get so much more affected the older I get and the more people cease to be.

I remember my first funeral. It was a somewhat distant relative that I had seen a couple of times, but was never close to. My grandmother said it would be good for me to come for “practice.” So that it would not be as bad when it was someone that had mattered more. She could not have been more wrong. This is not the kind of thing you can practice. I know that now. I don't know if she does.

I have been to several funerals at this point and merely one wedding. What does that say about me? I study cultures from the past – their relationship with their dead and funeral rites among other things. And I have come to think that funerals are more for the living then they are for the dead. The question is for which of the living? Not me, evidently, because funerals do not give me closure or comfort like I know they do for some other people - on the contrary. My grieving and healing happens elsewhere in much more private venues and rituals.

On the Supposed Demigods in White

It's been way too long since I have written a post – two weeks now, in fact. Two weeks in which I have sadly been way too preoccupied freaking out about the dentist appointment I've just had ... looking up the procedure and all possible complications ... imagining all kinds of horrible scenarios … you get the picture.

The blog wasn't the only thing I neglected for this, but it thankfully didn't affect my studies too much. Yeah, the summer is over and classes have resumed. The good news is that I started off rather well, because when it comes to reigning in obsessive thoughts, it's much better to give my brain something to focus on – like language studies – than to let it roam freely – like I do when I write. And it just so happens that I'm doing a lot of language studies this year.

However, the more interesting question here is, where this panic comes from. Because weirdly enough it doesn't stem from some horrible dentist experiences. I haven't really had those. Thank god! In fact, I haven't experienced much on the doctors front at all – much less than most people I know – as has been repeatedly pointed out to me these past weeks.

I have, however, time and time again seen doctors employ diagnostic processes that looked a lot more like guessing games than educated opinions. Not only that, but when I look at my circle of friends and acquaintances there is hardly anyone who hasn't been subjected to some kind of medical malpractice. But even though they might still suffer the consequences, their trust in doctors seems unshaken - a lot less shaken than mine at least.

To most of them doctors are still demigods in white. I just can't muster this kind of blind faith. What comes to mind when I think about doctors are their failures, both in the here and now and in historical times - because history major, you know. And most infuriating thing is that despite all this evidence they still got this disgustingly condescending air about them. Think 'doctors are gentlemen, and gentlemen's hands are clean.' Also, they may have studied medicine all they want, but what good is that, if they don't even know how to listen to what their patients tell them – if they don't even ask the right questions?

Speaking of studying medicine, seeing medical students in their natural habitat didn't help much to strengthen my trust either. Because at university they look as much as demigods as you and I. And in fact, when it comes to academic bulimia they're among the worst offenders. So long story short, even though I might be kind of a hypochondriac, when it comes to doctors, I'd rather keep my distance and double check everything before I commit to anything.

On Really Bad Advice

When I hear people apologizing for how lame of a phrase “It'll get better” supposedly is, all I can muster is a rueful smile. Because you know what I always got to hear? Something along those lines: “The time will come when you're gonna wish yourself back to this very time of your life.” Well, if that doesn't make you cheer up and appreciate what you have. What it did was make me feel kind of guilty for being unhappy in the first place. And then there is the implication in this statement that it is - apparently - only gonna get worse – much worse. So that should make you wanna get up in the morning or, you know, like just put an end to it right away.

But the thing is, that this is - of course - not quite what the folks were saying. In fact, they weren't talking about me and my problems at all. They were essentially projecting the feelings they had about their own schooldays onto me. Apparently they did fare a lot better than I did. Go figure. And it seems like they couldn't even imagine that it might be different for me. I did realize this back then, but that didn't make the statement any less annoying and hurtful. I mean it would have helped a lot, if someone had just acknowledged my experience for starters.

Now I at least get the triumph of saying that they were wrong. It didn't get worse. It got infinitely better - even though I'm still sort of in limbo at the moment. But I wouldn't wanna go back to this time of my life if you gave me a truckload of cash for it. And I'm damn well never ever gonna be going to any reunion. I just hope there will never come a time when I'd wanna do go back because I'd pretty much have to hit rock bottom to get to that point.

On Great Expectations

As I alluded in my previous post, I recently had a birthday and as usual that got me thinking.

I remember when I was younger I had such high hopes for my birthdays and my birthday parties. I used to be all giddy and exited for weeks in advance. On this very day life was going to be so much better than ever before and the party was going to be spectacular, downright transcendent and yada yada yada. Then the big day finally came and needless to say ... it never lived up to my expectations. So I always ended up being sad and frustrated, building up even higher hopes for the next year. A classic vicious circle. Eventually this pattern let to me simultaneously hoping for this magical birthday and dreading the inevitable disappointment. So this day even manifested itself as one of the turning points of the year for me.

However, when you reach a certain (or not so certain) age (because it is different for everyone) other aspects come into play. At some point you are gonna get very nervous about being yet another year older. You start to fret about what you have achieved so far - which is never enough - and where you're gonna end up and all that jazz. If you have reached that point in your life, you will know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, lucky you or not so lucky as you're about to find out.

Because in an ironic turn of events this very anxiety now seems to counteract the ridiculously high expectations for *~the~magical~birthday~* and makes this day a much happier event for me than it ever was. Sure, there is some anxiety about the future but on the very day it's much more about what I managed to accomplish the past year and the happy memories I made along the way.

A New Adventure

This Journey started about a year ago between the four walls I live, work and sleep in. I don't exactly remember what specifically roused the desire to have a voice, but at some point I knew I wanted to write a blog, talk about the things that I care about, and share the things I create - maybe even find some like-minded people, because they don't seem to dwell where I usually attempt to socialize.

So, as you do when you're an overly insecure person like me and rarely ever leave the house, I've been doing a lot of research on how to get this thing off the ground. I read about content strategy, layout, platforms, illustration and copyright issues - you name it. I've even prewritten some posts. But there's only so much you can do without actually doing the deed. So, I come to this party late and totally over prepared in theory, yet probably totally clueless in practice - the usual.

I've set myself a deadline to get this thing going before my 27th birthday. It wasn't a bad feeling to see it pass by - maybe because the stage fright somehow went along with it and I finally got up the courage to really put myself out there. So this, in a sense, is an ending as much as it is a beginning - the ending of preparation and fretting and the beginning of the actual adventure. I'm leaving behind the safety of those snugly four walls and step out into the big wide world of the Internet with all it's perils and temptations. I'm still somewhat apprehensive, but I'm putting one foot in front of the other and keep my eyes on the price i.e. gaining confidence and meeting some like-minded people along the way or getting some different perspectives to enrich my understanding of the world.

I know I might just be talking to myself here, but if anyone were to ever reads this - because it's out on the Internet now and this kind of thing tends to happen sometimes when things are out on the Internet, feel free to talk back - in a civilized manner, please.

Farewell fellow hermits