The Good Death: Making Death Part of Your Life
Fear the reaper? Most of us do. But there’s help!
Since January 2011, a ’death insider’ has been breaking down the mysterious world of death, dying, and what happens to our bodies and remains once we’ve shuffled off this mortal coil.
The business of funerary rites and procedures, dating back as far as humans have been dying, is a fantastically varied one. Different cultures celebrate the passing of a soul in countless different ways. Bodies have been buried in caskets, slid into peat bogs, burned on pyres, dismembered and scattered, mummified, and even sometimes ingested.
Caitlin, a licensed funeral director with a degree in Mortuary Science, has started the organization "Order of the Good Death" to shed some light on the cryptic and often impenetrable business of mortuary. Her videos on YouTube answer pressing, and sometimes strange, questions regarding death and our bodies.
The Order of the Good Death was founded in January of 2011 by Caitlin, a mortician and writer living in Los Angeles, CA. Since then, the Order has expanded to include filmmakers, poets, musicians, artists, and writers exploring ways to prepare a death phobic culture for their inevitable mortality.
The Order of the Good Death is about making death a part of your life. That means committing to staring down your death fears- whether it be your own death, the death of those you love, the pain of dying, the afterlife (or lack thereof), grief, corpses, bodily decomposition, or all of the above. Accepting that death itself is natural, but the death anxiety and terror of modern culture are not.
While not without detractors (often largely directed from industry insiders who insist these ’trade secrets’ remain unknown), Caitlin has attracted a following of her videos and website because of her ability to demystify the whole field in a respectful, yet candid way.
Gallows humour has always been one way of dealing with these issues, and that is another way Caitlin reveals potentially discomfiting truths about the biz in her droll videos.
The Order of the Good Death.com discusses issues such as Home Death care, natural burial and "The Modern Macabre".
Post Death Tattoos?
Video from: YouTube.com
Corpse in Space. Like Pigs in Space, but deader.
Video from: YouTube.com
You Got Death Questions, She’s Got Death Answers
Video from: YouTube.com
Ask A Mortician YouTube Channel
~E
Top Image: Antique Print Death Scene
