- Hi. I'm Caitlin Doughty.
I'm a mortician and a death acceptance advocate.
In America right now, there are basically two routes
that your dead body can go down.
You go down the quote, unquote traditional route,
which is the chemical embalming, the makeup, the suit,
the flowers, the heavy casket buried in the cemetery.
Or you go the cremation route,
which is increasingly popular.
And cremation is really great.
It's much less expensive, so it's a good thing for price,
but we're kind of losing our connection
with death and ritual a little bit.
So what I do as a mortician is actually
a little bit different than your typical mortician.
I work more in the DIY death space, I guess you could say.
And what that means is that it's totally safe
and totally legal for families
to take care of their own dead.
People have this conception
that the body starts to turn immediately and, you know,
this decomposing corpse in your living room.
That's completely not true.
The bacteria in decomposition is not the same bacteria
that causes disease, even.
So under most circumstances,
you're under no threat from the dead body.
The dead body is your friend.
You're actually safer being next to a dead body
than you are on an airplane, really,
as far as getting diseases.
The really cool thing about do it yourself funerals
is that each one can be completely unique to you.
When you go to a more traditional funeral home,
you're gonna get the same casket options,
the same service options,
but when you do it yourself, really, anything goes.
You have a two to three day period, in the home,
where the body's there.
You can have a party, if you want,
you can chant, you can have a movie screening.
You can do really whatever is meaningful
for the person who's died, or for your family,
and you don't have anyone telling you who that person was,
or what is honorable or respectful to do with their body.
We are definitely in a place now
where we don't like talking about death
and it feels like a taboo.
It feels like you're going to bring the whole room down
if you talk about it at all or dare speak it's name.
But there's totally a way out of it.
It wasn't like this in American culture a hundred years ago
and it doesn't have to be like this
in American culture five years from now.
In the future, if we make a commitment
to having more open conversations about it,
the same way we have with sex, it's completely possible.
And it starts with deciding that death is totally natural
and not weird, and not icky, or morbid, or spooky-ooky.
And that kinda starts with you speaking up about it.