Description
We all share two major life events: we are born, and we will die. But we treat these two events very differently. Birth is often a public celebration. Death is usually a private time for sadness. This book explores why we feel this way and looks at the many different ways humans have handled death throughout history and across the world. Our modern view of death is just one of many, and perhaps not the healthiest.
A core reason we struggle with death is psychological. The human brain is built to organize the world. From the moment we are born, we put things into clear categories. This happens even in people born blind; it is a fundamental part of being human. We know what a “tool” is and what an “animal” is. But death breaks this system. It is not easy to categorize. Is it a single, final moment? Or is it a long, ongoing process? We are, in fact, slowly dying every day. The dust in our homes is made mostly of our own dead skin cells. This contradiction—that death is both an end and a part of life—creates deep anxiety. It is why we often prefer not to think about it at all.
When we are forced to think about it, we usually imagine a peaceful end: dying in our sleep, free of pain, surrounded by loved ones. But this idea is different from the historical concept of a “good death.” This older idea emerged thousands of years ago, around the eighth century BC, when societies became more settled. Life became longer and less violent. People suddenly had things to protect, like property, status, and a family business. A “good death” was not about comfort; it was about preparation. It meant having the time to get your affairs in order. It was a moral responsibility to decide who would inherit the land. It was also a spiritual duty, giving the elderly and sick time for prayer and reflection before the end.
In modern times, we still value the idea of a prepared ending. We hear stories of people who, knowing their time is short, write autobiographies, create photo projects, and choose to die at home surrounded by friends. This seems like an ideal way to go. Unfortunately, this kind of peaceful, reflective end has become a luxury. While most people say they want this experience, very few have the financial resources to make it happen. At the same time, our relationship with the physical body changed dramatically. In the nineteenth century, death stopped being a purely sacred event.
This shift happened because of science. As medicine advanced, anatomy schools needed many more bodies, or cadavers, for students to study. This new demand created a conflict with old traditions. In 1832, the United Kingdom passed a law allowing schools to use the unclaimed bodies of the poor for dissection. But there were never enough. This led to a dark new business: grave robbing. Men known as “resurrectionists” would work in teams to dig up fresh graves, break open coffins, and steal the bodies. They were paid well for their work. This practice had ugly biases. In the United States, grave robbers most often stole the bodies of Black people. In the United Kingdom, they focused on the graves of the poor. The bodies were stripped of all clothes to make them anonymous and sold to medical schools, showing a new, purely practical view of the dead.
Today, medicine continues to change our definition of death, creating new and difficult problems. The lines are blurrier than ever. In 1947, the invention of CPR meant that a stopped heart was no longer the final word. Then came ventilators, machines that can keep a person breathing and their heart beating for years, even in an artificial coma. Doctors then suggested that death should be defined by a lack of brain activity. But even this definition is not solid, as some patients can recover from brain failure.
This uncertainty creates terrible ethical dilemmas for doctors and families. This was seen in the case of Jahi McMath, a 13-year-old girl declared brain dead after surgery. Her doctors said she was gone, but her parents disagreed and fought in court to keep her on life support. In another case, the Lee family, Laotian refugees in California, took their comatose daughter Lia home. They cared for her for 22 years, even pre-chewing her food to feed her. They only considered her truly dead when she finally passed away from pneumonia. These stories show how unclear the line between life and death has become.
Our modern, hands-off approach to death is not universal. Other cultures have had a much more direct and physical relationship with the deceased as part of their grieving. The Wari’ tribe in the Brazilian rainforest, for example, practiced necrophagy—the ritualized eating of the dead. This may sound shocking, but for the Wari’, it was a profound act of love and respect. It was a way to process grief and to literally keep the lost loved one within the family and the community. The family would mourn, and then relatives would cook and consume the body, ensuring nothing was left. This practice, which ended in the 1960s, suggests that a less detached relationship with the dead might help in grieving.
We see another complex relationship with death in Victorian England during the nineteenth century. A popular trend was “memento mori” photography. This means “Remember you will die.” These were photographs taken of a recently deceased loved one. What made them unique was that the person was often posed as if they were still alive. They were propped up in chairs, or “sleeping” in bed, often surrounded by their living family members. These photos were very expensive and sometimes were the only photograph a family ever owned. This trend shows two things. First, it shows how important grief was to the Victorians. But it also shows a deep denial of death, an attempt to make the dead person look lifelike and hide the reality of their passing.
Today, we are creating our own new traditions, some of which are just as strange. There is a trend of “life reenactment funerals.” In New Orleans, one family organized a party for their deceased mother, Miriam Burbank. They dressed her body, sat her at a table with a beer and a cigarette, and put her under a disco ball, surrounded by the things she loved. Another funeral featured a deceased boxer, Christopher Rivera, whose body was posed standing in a boxing ring. At the same time, our digital lives are creating new ways to remember—or not forget. Facebook now has over 30 million profiles that belong to people who have died. There are even apps that let people write messages to be posted after they are gone. While these new traditions can be comforting, they can also make it harder for the living to accept the finality of death and move through their grief.
Throughout history, humans have been far less squeamish about death and dead bodies than we are today. From ritual eating to grave robbing, societies have faced death more directly. Our modern habit is often to deny death, to hide it, and to leave the entire process to professionals. This book suggests that this denial does not help us. By pushing death away and keeping the bodies of our loved ones at a distance, we may only be making grief more difficult and painful to process.
