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

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty, illustrations by Landis Blair

An enlightening non-fiction travel book that looks at funerary rituals around the world with openness and curiosity - while at the same time holding capitalism in the industry to account.

American mortician, Caitlin Doughty, takes us on a journey around the world to get up-close and personal with customs, ideas and conversations around death. We look at how Mexico's Dias de los Muertos has grown into a symbol of protest culture (among many other things), recognizing the deaths of kept from the public eye including sex workers, indigenous and gay rights activists. How women in La Paz, Bolivia are communing directly with death without having to go through the male intermediaries of the Catholic church. And the 'suicide culture' in Japan, how the act is viewed as selfless and honourable through history from samurai to kamikaze.

What do you want when you die? It's a hard question for many people in Western cultures to answer. Caitlin Doughty reflects on Western funerary customs with a critical eye especially when it comes to the cost, and the time allotted to grieve and tend to our dead loved ones. "Our avoidance is self-defeating. By dodging the talk about our inevitable end, we put both our pocketbooks and our ability to mourn at risk."

I love this quote from Caitlin Doughty's guide in Spain, "When your bill comes due, you have to pay them. At my company, I pay my bills. Here at this restaurant, I pay my bill. It is the same with feelings. When the feelings come, the fear of death, I must feel those feelings. I must pay my bill. It is being alive."

This book is best read just before filling in your death plan. If that thought makes you squeamish - don't worry - you won't feel the same by the end of the book.