Words matter. These are the best Caitlin Doughty Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Vaults and caskets are not the law; they are the policy of individual cemeteries. Vaults prevent the settling of the dirt around the body, thus making landscaping more uniform and cost effective. As an added bonus, vaults can be customized and sold at a markup. Faux marble? Bronze? Take your pick, family.
Writing a memoir is such a private, personal experience that it’s intimidating to think of adapting it for television.
I think about death most of the day, every day. We can’t escape death, and choosing to ignore it only makes it more scary.
I’ve worked very hard to become comfortable with how death works and why it happens. I now know that death isn’t out to get me.
The definition of ‘morbid’ is an unhealthy preoccupation with death. Unfortunately, there’s no word to mean the perfectly healthy preoccupation with death, which is what I have.
If people really knew what they were getting into with their third chemotherapy treatment, or getting a pacemaker when they’re 92, if they really knew what that was going to mean, they might say no, and we should give them that information.
I am a mortician who tells you that you don’t necessarily need a mortician.
In America, burial means an embalmed body in a heavy-duty casket with a vault built over it, so that the ground doesn’t settle. That body is encased in many layers of denial.
The home funeral – caring for the dead ourselves – changes our relationship to grieving. If you have been married to someone for 50 years, why would you let someone take them away the moment they die?
Going around not fully believing that you’re going to die is really problematic because it affects how you think about the future of the planet, about the future of your own life, about the decisions you’re making.
I was fascinated by mortality. Most people are, even if they don’t admit it.
For thousands of years, we did have death surrounding us, and we did have people die in the home. You would take care of your own end. You would do ritual processes, and you would be involved in it, and that’s been taken away in the Western world.
If we ignore our death, we end up just going around completely oblivious to why we do the things we do!
Not only is natural burial by far the most ecologically sound way to perish, it doubles down on the fear of fragmentation and loss of control. Making the choice to be naturally buried says, ‘Not only am I aware that I’m a helpless, fragmented mass of organic matter, I celebrate it. Vive la decay!’
All the body wants to do biologically is decompose. Once you die, it’s, ‘Let me out here! I’m ready to shoot my atoms back into the universe!’