Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

Author:Caitlin Doughty [Doughty, Caitlin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The chamber is composed of ceramic or other material which disintegrates slightly during each cremation and the product of that disintegration is commingled with the cremated remains. . . . Some residue remains in the cracks and uneven places of the chamber.

In layman’s terms: When you’re pulled out of the machine post-cremation, some of the machine comes with you—and some of your bones stay behind. “Commingling,” it’s called.

No matter how many times I dragged the mini retort broom across the breaks in the ceramic surface, fragments of each body were lost. Not that I didn’t try. I attempted to gather each sliver. The hot air would scorch my face as I stuck my body a little too far into the machine, dislodging trapped bones with the mini broom until the straw bristles melted into a stump.

Once, while sweeping out the cremation machine, a hot bone fragment launched itself out at me. I accidentally stepped on it and burned a hole deep into the rubber sole of my boot. “Goddammit!” I yelled, and with an involuntary jerk of the knee I kicked the bone in a high arc across the crematory. It landed somewhere behind a row of gurneys. After five minutes crawling on my hands and knees I found the ember and matched the piece to the bone-shaped hole in my boot. You will be fragmented.

Of course, there are different perspectives on fragmentation. A month later, Mike gave me two (unpaid, mind you) vacation days to attend the wedding of my cousin in Nashville. In typical pre-wedding fashion, a ladies’ spa day was scheduled for the afternoon before the ceremony. I was whisked into the massage room, a windowless den of incense and meditation Muzak. The blond masseuse, soft-spoken and very Southern, began her heavenly dance across my back, making chitchat as she massaged.

“So what do you do, sweetheart?” she drawled over the chanting from the speakers.

Do I tell this woman what I do, I wondered. Do I tell her that her magical fingers are kneading muscle knots caused by the hauling of corpses and scraping of bones from giant ovens?

I decided to tell her.

To her credit she didn’t skip a beat. “Well. . . . I can tell you that I’ve got lots of family in West Virginia and they consider all that cremation-stuff to be devil’s work.”

“Well, what do you think about cremation?” I asked my masseuse.

She deliberated for a second, her hands resting on my back. “You know, I’m born again.”

Fortunately I was face-down on the massage table, so she couldn’t see my eyes flickering back and forth. I was unsure if I was supposed to ask a follow-up question.

There was a long pause before she continued. “I do believe Jesus will come at the rapture to take the blessed up to heaven. But here’s the thing. I know we will need our bodies, but what if I should be swimmin’ in the ocean and get myself torn apart by a shark? My body is bobbing around

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