https://www.youtube.com/user/OrderoftheGoodDeath A great youtube channel by a mortician. i love her videos :)
A great characterization of the industry and of the faces behind it. Modern society is oddly sequestered from the reality of death. The thought of death in the concrete sense only strikes most of us unbidden in sharp, unsettling reminders. The author of the article doesn't seem to assert a strong position on whether we ought to become more familiarly acquainted with death; he describes Caleb's serenity, but also the horror of the job: Here's a poem by Philip Larkin that describes that moment of knowing death whole:Some things we see will remain with us forever, Caleb admits on his blog. They are so disturbing, so terrible, that we do the world a favor by not sharing them. Maybe there was no winning the staring contest with death.
Ambulances Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited. Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed, And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress; For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable inside a room
The traffic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.