Dealing with the Living/Dead
- How would you feel being directly involved in the death process of a family member? Would you be able to push the button to send your loved ones “off to their final disposition”?
I think being directly involved in the death process of a family member would be very hard for me, specifically the hands on care of the body that Doughty discusses, I think because the idea is very foreign in our culture. I have been to quite a few funerals and wakes of older relatives and extended family, and all of them were open casket, maybe one of them being in a closed casket. I remember the funeral home dealing with preparing the body, and family duties being mostly the obituary and finding old pictures, more removed tasks like that. I think I would need time to think over the idea in the situation to know if I could do it, right now it seems too abstract to really know. Referring to the action of pushing the button to send the body into the oven, I think I would be able to do this task if I were with my family and felt supported, it would be much harder alone.
- Why does Caitlyn Doughty feel like it is so important to humanize the industrial crematorium?
She feels that this is important so that more people can feel comfortable being a part of a witness cremation. People imagine crematoriums often to be more cold, removed places. Doughty suggests they become more a place of service, with the rooms being better lit and decorated, with the possibility of music liked by the family playing during the service. In humanizing it in this way would make the process of a witness cremation more comfortable for the family, and make it more likely that they’d feel comfortable witnessing the cremation. I think this would make cremation seem more like the nice good-bye that a casket funeral feels like and less like the body is just sent off.
- Having gone behind the curtains of embalming, cremation and fast-food production, has your opinion changed regarding these commonly accepted practices?
My view of embalming and cremation has certainly changed after reading Mitford and Doughty, however my opinion regarding fast food has not changed much after reading Pollan as I have held similar views as those expressed in his passage for some time. In Doughty’s interview, I was not surprised when she reflected that family’s often aren’t there to witness cremation. “It really was that I was alone there and I was sending all of these people off to their – to their final you know, disposition in the crematory machine and there was no one there.” I wasn’t surprised by this because in my experience it is common for families to send the bodies off and not see them again until after they are cremated or embalmed and in the casket. I was surprised, however, that Doughty kind of advocated for at-home preparation of the body and funerals. “There’s a movement not only to do that, but to also take care of the body yourself, in the home – so in a way, bypassing the funeral director and the mortuary entirely.” I can imagine many people resist this movement as its very different from sending the body off to be embalmed or cremated, and much more involved. I imagine this scares a lot of people. In Mitford’s essay, I was not surprised by the actual process of embalming nor its purpose. “The object of all this attention to the corpse it must be remembered is to make it presentable for viewing in an attitude of healthy repose” (47). Having been to a few open casket funerals, I am aware of the process of embalming and its purpose. However, I was surprised that this procedure’s popularity is limited to North America. “In no part of the world but in North America is it widely used” (43). This surprised me, because it is so common here, it made me wonder what the most popular procedure is in other countries. Most of Pollan’s essay did not surprise me, as I am very familiar with the topic of fast food. For example, I am aware of the effects of eating too much fast food. “In the long run, however, the eater pays a high price for these cheap calories: obesity, Type II diabetes, heart disease” (Pollan, 117). However, I was surprised by Pollan’s son’s reaction to being asked if chicken nuggets tasted like chicken. “‘No they taste like what they are, which is nuggets’” (Pollan, 112). I was surprised by this disconnect of the child between chicken and chicken nuggets, that he completely denied that they were chicken.
