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

by Caitlin Doughty

In 1950, the government sent letters to the 1,800 families of Chavez Ravine, mostly low income Mexican American farmers, informing them that they would have to sell their homes to make way for public housing. The displaced families were promised new schools and playgrounds and housing priority when the developments were finished. Instead, after removing the families and destroying a community, the city of Los Angeles scrapped the public housing plan and partnered with a New York businessman to build Dodger Stadium.

I ducked my head under an entryway draped in golden marigolds. Right above the door hung a framed picture of Jorge, who was only twenty-six years old when he died. In the photo he wore a backwards baseball cap. Behind him were posters from bands. “Slipknot? I don’t know about that, Jorge,” I thought, wondering if it was bad form to judge the dead for their taste in music. “Oh, the Misfits! That’s a good choice.”

To end a pregnancy at such a late stage required three appointments over three days. A line of protestors blocked Sarah and Ruben’s path to enter the clinic. “One particularly vile woman screamed over and over that I was a murderer. I couldn’t take it, so I walked directly up to her and screamed in her face, ‘My baby is already dead! How dare you!’ ”

They waited in the clinic for an hour, listening to the faint screams of the protesters outside: “Hey, lady with the dead baby! Listen, we can still save you!”

The Western funeral home loves the word “dignity.” The largest American funeral corporation has even trademarked the word. What dignity translates to, more often than not, is silence, a forced poise, a rigid formality. Wakes last exactly two hours. Processions lead to the cemetery. The family leaves the cemetery before the casket is even lowered into the ground.

It makes you uneasy when a body is somewhere it’s not “supposed” to be, like seeing your chemistry teacher at the supermarket.

Katrina noted that “humans are so focused on preventing aging and decay—it’s become an obsession. And for those who have been socialized female, that pressure is relentless. So decomposition becomes a radical act. It’s a way to say, ‘I love and accept myself.’ ”