Caitlin Doughty - Confronting your death
Doughty’s main conclusion about confronting your death is to “think about what you want done with your dead body”. Some reasoning behind the conclusion includes that thinking about the different ways that your dead body can be handled can be oddly comforting to some people. Either that is being buried in a coffin, cremated, an above ground crypt, or with a natural burial.
These ideas have been used in many cultures for thousands of years to comfort the mind about death. Figuring out what will happen to your body is one less thing for us to worry about. Some arguments for this conclusion are that in some cultures, they only bury a body a certain way. If the culture has all bodies cremated then that can send a certain wave of comfort to a person, knowing what will be done with their body, but at the same time may discomfort them. The person might not be comfortable having their body cremated but their culture says they should. That can bring discomfort about death.
Another example I can think of relates to my mother. My mother is allergic to formaldehyde and her skin would disintegrate if her body was embalmed. She doesn't want a natural burial due to her fear of bugs, which makes creamtation one of her only options. She also, though, does now want her body to disintegrate, hence the no formaldehyde. I talked to my mom about the video and she found discomfort in it all. I also talked to me friend about what he wants done to his body after he passes. He said that his biggest fear is being in a dark, cold hole underground. So we agreed that cremation would be the best way to handle his body. This conversation gave a sense of relief to him by confronting his fear and knowing that options are still available.
I agree with the point that if you tell someone what you want done with your body, it is one less thing for the people you leave behind and your dead self. By telling someone, you know that your body will be taken care of the way you want it to happen. It's also saddening to think that in some cultures you don't get a say in what gets done with your body because it is done within the cultural norm. I appreciate you sharing this little story about your mom. I feel like talking about death and what you want done with your body is discomforting along with scary. No one feels comfortable talking about death when it may not be for awhile. But for others, it doesn't bother them as much, which I guess could be a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is saddening to think that in some cultures you don't get a say in what gets done with your body, because I believe this to be a fundamental human right so long as we live in a society of any kind where, before our deaths, we can so easily communicate to others what we want done with our bodies after our deaths. However, as the original poster pointed out, some people find solace in such restrictions on their freedom because it means they do not have to go through the trouble of making that decision for themselves. For some, this could come from a place of laziness or fear, but if you truly know that you do not care about a particular thing which ultimately should be your decision to make, it can ironically feel pretty liberating to not have the freedom to decide for yourself. For some, freedom to make a choice for yourself can be paralyzing because they either have too little information to make the decision, or are inhibited by fear or laziness or complacency, or are so overwhelmed with information to even know where to begin.
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