T.E. W. (terez93) reviewed on 10/10/2019 + 323 more book reviews

O, Caitlin!

Thou art a national treasure.

I would verily entrust thee with my mortal remains.
In fact, if you're around, and I'm around... let's do this thing. Natural burial, please. Although that funeral pyre in Colorado is tempting, too, 'cause that just sounds like seven kinds of awesome.

Seriously: I was the fortunate recipient of one of the GR giveaways of an advance uncorrected proofs copy of this book, which I received today, and I very much look forward to reading and reviewing it. If it's anything like her previous works, I'm in for a treat! Be back shortly; gotta go read!

UPDATE: anything dedicated "To my adorable future corpses" has to be worth a read. Different from her other two excellent books, this recent effort rather takes the form of a Q and A, based on questions she gets from interested and curious young people who follow her blogs and perennially popular YouTube channel (YES, I'm a subscriber! haha). Some of the questions are straight-up and rather thought-provoking, such as "what would happen if you swallowed a bag of popcorn before you die, and then were cremated?" If someone doesn't beat me to it, I might just have to put that little stipulation in my last will and testament, 'cause that sounds worth a try. Talk about a memorial service to remember! (Spoiler: according to Caitlin, nothing spectacular would happen; the popcorn would be incinerated before it had a chance to cascade out of your innards) Others, not quite as jarring: "what would happen to an astronaut body in space," and "can I be buried in the same grave as my hamster," a rather poignant one, considering the question is coming from a child, and the ever-popular (but sometimes perplexing) question: "if someone is trying to sell a house, do they have to tell the buyer that someone died there?"

I won't spoil it and attempt to answer these, because Caitlin does an admirable job, but, more importantly, she also pays a great public service in making death, well, accessible to us mere mortals who have much less contact with the Recently Deceased, and hence familiarity with (and typically more fear and loathing toward) its nuts and bolts than professional corpse-curators. We all have to (but usually hate to) admit it, but we're all bound for the grave, or the crematory, or the funeral pyre, eventually, so it's helpful to discuss it openly. According to those who frequently dance with death, when we do, much of it loses its taboo, and therein lies the point. Caitlin herself refers to her endless fascination with what she calls "the wonders of death." If that's not passion about what you do, I don't know what is.

Lest you think that there's a salacious, exploitative air to this, or any of her other books, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. More than the vast majority of subject matter of all descript I've read about death and dying, in Caitlin's work, there's genuine respect and reverence. Even further, she encourages everyone to get into the weeds and to immerse themselves into a topic that genuinely makes most people very uncomfortable: hence her admonition "Don't let anyone tell you that your curiosity about death is 'morbid,' or 'weird.' The universe isn't all puppies and rainbows-it contains both life and death. If someone tells you your questions about death are morbid, it's likely they're scared of the topic themselves." Right on, girl! (you can clearly see what side of the fence I'm standing on, here) For the questions she's not able to get to in the book, there's a well-stocked bibliography for further reading, if you're interested in learning more.

I suspect that in writing a book geared toward young readers, she's attempting to "get them young," specifically with the lesson that death doesn't have to be scary, and that it's OK to take it in a lighthearted manner sometimes, because it helps us all to deal with touchy subjects such as grief and loss, and sometimes the conflicts and controversies that surround various death rituals and traditions, even within families. I've seen my fair share, and it ain't pretty. Much of Caitlin's public work centered on death education is geared toward getting people, especially death-phobic Americans, to just TALK about it, and have the conversation with family members before we all meet our day, when things are much more difficult. And to those who object to a book of this type, who argue that children shouldn't be exposed to this kind of material, bear in mind: these are the questions actually coming from kids. Getting young people to think about their own mortality is a victory in and of itself.

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