Book Review: From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find a Good Death by Caitlin Doughty (5/5)

What does it mean to die with dignity?

This is the question that I found myself pondering constantly throughout Doughty’s second book (230 pages), but the answer seems to change based on where you are and who you ask — and I came away from the book thinking that the answer definitely isn’t found in the traditional funeral homes of the United States. In fact, Eternity shows that the US funeral industry and American cultural norms around death & dying are everything but dignified.

This book was surprising in the way that it made me think about the intersections of death with lots of different topics. Throughout her travels, throughout the United States, Mexico, Japan, Belize, and others, each country brought a different intersection to the forefront. Issues like abortion, body anatomy, feminism, technology, and misogyny in religion were tied into each essay.

Doughty definitely has a focus on more ecological and natural kinds of burial practices and spends a lot of time explaining why the Americanized embalming and cremations in modern funeral homes are so problematic. But mostly, Doughty’s focus is the discussion of allowing families to let their grief and mourning take up space. The removal of the family from the process of…