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All the Living and the Dead: A Personal Investigation into the Death Trade

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In conclusion, I admire Hayley Campbell's courage to shine a light on the often unknown world of death workers and the death industry. It's not until we face a natural disaster ourselves that we'd ever learn of the existence of Kenyon, or undergo problems with a pregnancy to be introduced to a bereavement midwife. I think it's important to better understand and appreciate the death workers within our community and thank them for the very important work that they do. The author began this book as a look at the people who work behind the scenes to care for the dead, and to help the living who are grieving them. She even admits that at the onset of writing this book she thought that it would be a straightforward process as she followed the body from death to burial or cremation. It turned out to be a work of much greater scope. Spent new year devouring this book. Essential reading if you’re a human person in possession of a life. A fascinating, searingly honest and unexpectedly tender look at those who take care of us in death. I badly needed to read this.” — Tuppence Middleton As someone who used to work in end-of-life care, I have a lot of opinions about books centered around death and loss. I want everyone to have better understanding about this important topic and have high standards as a result. This is a really strong, well-written book but it could have been even stronger with a few changes. Two additional professions should have been profiled: a hospice nurse or CNA and someone who provides physician-assisted dying. I’m obviously biased toward the inclusion of hospice and palliative care but it’s a puzzling omission regardless. Hospice provides a unique form of support throughout the dying process and yet a lot of people have never heard of it or misunderstand what it means. As far as physician-assisted dying, it can be a dicey issue so I can understand why the author might not want to wade in those particular waters. At the same time, she chose to include the Cryonics Institute so it’s not as if she shied away anything that might raise eyebrows. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Not many people like to think about death because we are reminded that one day we too will perish and our molecules will be recycled into forming other things, both living and inanimate. Where do we go when we die? Not our souls, not our spirits, but our corporeal wrapping of blood and bone, sinew and soft tissue. Who takes care of the dead for us when we cannot? And perhaps, more importantly, what leads these same people to face this starkest reality, the intimate stripping of mortal illusion, in our stead? Campbell's genuine curiosity, careful reporting, and insightful commentary make for an engrossing read. Readers will appreciate both her meticulous reporting and her marked compassion." — Booklist (starred) A surprising fact I learned through reading this book: "After a violent death, there is no US government agency that comes to clean up the blood." I hadn't realized that the homeowner is responsible for either cleaning up themselves or employing a professional crime scene cleaner.When the pandemic began I was in the middle of writing a book about how not only do we not talk about death – despite the fact that we have filled our pop culture with it – but that we have created a whole industry of people who serve as a barrier between us and death in a physical sense. A body does not magically disappear, or transport itself to the grave. There are people who shepherd it from deathbed to cemetery plot, who care for it where we do not go.” Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she asks: Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.

I found this to be well researched, somewhat graphic and eye opening. I must admit I never really thought about who is behind the scenes cleaning up crime scenes, performing autopsies and those getting bodies ready for funeral viewings, as well as gravediggers. It was, also, interesting to me that executions are listed as homicides on the death certificate ~ I mean it makes sense and I don't know what I thought it would be, well actually I never really thought about it. But then is the executioner considered the murderer? Charlotte Spencer [2] as Charlotte Appleby, a pioneering photographer who accompanies her husband to try to turn the farm's fortunes around An intriguing, candid, and frequently poignant book that asks what the business of death can teach all of us in the midst of life. Readers will form a connection with Campbell's voice as intimate as her own relationship with mortality." — Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering ArtA deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people―morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners―who work in it and what led them there. Through Campbell's probing, reverent interviews with these people who see death every day, Campbell pieces together the psychic jigsaw to ask: Why would someone choose a life of working with the dead? And what does dealing with death every day do to you as a person?

Fuelled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers from the people who choose to make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, Campbell encounters funeral directors, embalmers, a man who dissects cadavers for anatomy students, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending 62 lives. She sits in a van with gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, holds a brain at an autopsy, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, and goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective. Campbell weaves judicious reflections on the philosophy and history of the death industry into the reportage . . . Never macabre . . . poignant, transformative." — Financial Times Generous’ here is generously poised between denoting empathy and magnanimity (Gabriel’s tears show his new-found generosity of spirit towards others, such as his wife, such as Michael Furey) and simply signifying copiousness.

Despite his rather gauche social manners, Conroy is in many ways the centrepiece, the male figure at the heart of the social occasion: he is his aunts’ favourite nephew, to whom they entrust the duty (but also honour) of carving the goose at the dinner, and delivering the after-dinner speech (in the course of which we learn more of Conroy’s mild intellectual snobbery and social awkwardness).

Mike and Bob have buried friends, babies, murder victims that later needed to be exhumed, and both of them have buried their mothers - they helped each other dig them, like they would any other grave. When they themselves die, those graves will be reopened and their coffins placed a couple of inches above the lids of their mothers’. They have both, already, dug and stood inside their own graves. When I ask what that feels like, they glance at each other. They don’t think about it too much. Mike says that death, like a grave, is just a practical thing: you’re an outsider looking in, even if you’re standing in it. And why would anyone else dig the grave when they’re the local gravediggers? They’d do the same job for anyone, whether it’s a mother or a stranger. Bob says he’s just looking forward to being with his mum again, having lived with her all his life until she died two years ago. But he’s frightened of the graveyard at night. ‘She’ll look after me,’ he mumbles, smiling shyly.” A compassionate and compelling book. Fascinating and devastating in equal measure." —Charlie Gilmour, author of FeatherhoodExcept when someone we know, or as in the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II with near constant news coverage of someone famous, dies most of us go about our lives oblivious to the fact that there is dying all around. At the end, as he’s lifted us into the dark poetry of Gabriel’s vision, separating our perception from the experience of the man and letting us glide unfettered in the gentle cushion of the winter night, Joyce brings us down firmly with his final phrase. There is no good time to talk about death. Nobody wants to hear about death on a nice day, because it would spoil the mood, and nobody wants to talk about death when it is upon us because it’s too close, too insensitive, tonally off.

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