Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory

Westwind receives a delivery of human heads from Science Support, a company that accepts human remains for donation. Many people choose to donate their bodies after death; some will be used in medical research, while others will be used to teach plastic surgeons or to test parachute technology. Once the bodies or body parts have reached the end of their usefulness, Science Support delivers them to mortuaries like Westwind for cremation. 

Doughty takes the two heads out of their packaging and contemplates how much she admires people who donate their bodies to science. She explains that though she admires the action, she could never do it herself, as she has a “violent reaction to the thought of being fragmented in this way” (112), despite knowing that in the end, everyone will be fragmented in one way or another after death.

Though people may lead very different lives, death, and the subsequent funeral process, render those differences more or less invisible. After cremation, all bodies look the same: reduced to ash. Doughty ponders the modern funeral industry’s emphasis on personalization in light of this fact and admits that she also used to feel this need for personalization. Her idea for La Belle Mort would have filled this very desire.