Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory

Doughty describes her childhood love of Disney movies, with their fairy-tale romances and happy endings. After comparing the rather gruesome Hans Christian Andersen version of “The Little Mermaid” to the Disney version, she realizes that she would have preferred to grow up with the original story. The sanitized version, like many contemporary stories, erased the possibility of death and suffering, instead emphasizing romance and happiness. Doughty’s own love story begins in this chapter. One day, she watches Bruce prepare a body for burial. The body has undergone an autopsy, and the skin of the face is pulled away from the skull. When Bruce puts the skin back, Doughty recognizes the body as her friend, Luke. He is the only person who really understands her interest in death. 

Doughty realizes that the body is not Luke’s after all, just a doppelganger. Thinking that he was dead made her recognize her romantic feelings for him. She thinks about Luke as she cremates Maureen, a woman in her mid-fifties who died of cancer. Doughty delivers Maureen’s cremated remains to her husband, Matthew. The next Monday, Matthew’s body arrives at Westwind; he died just after his wife. As Doughty goes through the belongings that he wanted cremated with him, she finds the metal identification tag from Maureen’s cremation. She imagines Matthew sifting through his wife’s ashes to find this tag and is honored to “have been a part of their private last moment together, the last act of their love story” (127). She wants a love like theirs and knows that she must figure out how to be with Luke.

Mike and Doughty prepare the body of Juan, a 450-pound man, for burial. Mike wants to make sure the man will fit into the coffin that his family bought for him, as he does not want to charge them extra money for an oversized coffin. Later, Bruce arrives to embalm Juan. Bruce explains that larger bodies tend to decompose faster, resulting in worse odors. Most people never encounter human decomposition in their lives because decomposition has been largely removed from death due to modern burial practices like embalming and cremation. Doughty speculates that embalming and the use of heavy caskets and vaults “demonstrate our clear terror of decomposition” (134). 

The fear of decomposition is relatively new in Western culture. Medieval Christians considered the bodies of martyred saints to be holy. They would bury their dead in close proximity to these sacred remains, often in the eaves and rafters and even in the walls of churches. In the summer, this meant that the stench of rotting bodies would permeate the churches. Now, even at Westwind, encountering decomposition is rare. Although the smells associated with decomposition are undeniably unpleasant, they are yet another facet of death denial. Doughty believes that the way forward is a greater focus on natural burials, where “the body goes straight into the ground, in a simple biodegradable shroud” (139). That is the death option she has chosen for herself. She realizes that she is starting to break free of her childhood fear of death.

Doughty prepares the body of a man named Jeremy for burial. Jeremy’s sister comes to Westwind and tells Doughty that she is going to keep an eye on her because she believes that Doughty will cremate Jeremy without her permission. Doughty tries to explain that she would never do such a thing, but the woman is difficult to convince. Many people are suspicious of death workers. Some people believe that bodies are cremated all together, not one at a time, and that the ashes people receive are a random amalgamation, not the specific remains of a loved one. Other people believe that bodies are “kept hanging on meat hooks in the refrigerator” (144) or are dumped down toilets after cremation. Doughty is horrified that so many people have such misconceptions about mortuary practices and tries her best to explain to people what really happens. She finds that the more honest details she gives, the more people seem assured.

Witness cremations are one way to solve these problems of misinformation. Doughty finds that she wants to change the public perception of death and the funeral industry. She describes the work of death doulas, who see themselves as “vestiges of a time past, when the body was taken care of by the family” (145). These are people, usually women, who assist individuals and their families through the death process; the practice, while relatively new in Western culture, is gaining some prominence. Other cultures, including Muslim communities, have a long history of specific practices of caring for the dead; Doughty explores some of these traditions.

There is a strong modern belief that corpses are diseased and unhealthy. This belief leads people like police officers, funeral homes, and other healthcare and death workers to mislead the public about the risks associated with dead bodies. Doughty learns of one person who was told by a police detective that she could not keep her mother’s dead body in the house because her mother had diabetes, and the disease could pass to other family members. Doughty realizes that she wants to dedicate her life to death and to helping people understand death better. She decides that she is too secular to join the ranks of the new-age death doulas, so she decides to apply to mortuary school.

Doughty is left to run the crematorium on her own for two weeks while Mike goes on vacation. The first thing on the schedule is a witness cremation, which still makes her nervous: Sometimes, the conveyor belt that loads bodies into the retort shuts down, which could be very awkward if it happened in front of a family. Mike assures her that she will be fine. The day of the cremation, Doughty notices that the body, Mrs. Clemons, has developed an orange rot and has swollen “like an overripe peach” (151). Doughty does her best with makeup and takes Mrs. Clemons to the viewing room. She overhears the woman’s son say that she looked better before all the makeup; she privately disagrees, given the orange mold. The viewing and witness cremation go off without a hitch, and when Mike returns from his vacation, he tells her how proud he is of her. 

Doughty is overwhelmed with emotion: She is happy to finally be impressing Mike, but she has also been accepted to mortuary school, which will mean leaving Westwind and moving to Los Angeles. Though she is conflicted, moving to Los Angeles will also mean that she can be close to Luke. She has not yet told her friend about her feelings for him. When she tells Mike and Chris about her decision to go to mortuary school, Mike accepts stoically, while Chris is more sentimental. At the goodbye party they throw for her, Chris gives her an old coconut that a friend gave him when he lived in Hawai’i. Mike asks her if the sadness of what they do ever gets to her. She wants to discuss her complex feelings with him but struggles to put her thoughts into words.