A few days ago I discovered _Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from a Crematory_ by Caitlin Doughty.
Doughty writes with an ironic humor which makes it easier to accept the unfamiliar facts she shares.
In sharing the story of her own struggles to understand death, she moves to a very deep understanding of our general experiences of death in the West over the twentieth century.

In short, those of us who are now old have grown up in a world in which contact with death was largely kept hidden from us, both in hospitals and mortuaries.
Doughty argues that our ignorance and fear have cost us real emotional vitality in the years that we are alive.

Knowing that we will die presents the great existential challenge of our lives, and how we face it and manage our fear is the defining element of each life.
Some people find safety in religious belief.
Some try to defeat death by creating monuments to themselves.

Doughty is dedicating her life to helping people experience death and grief in loving ways that will help us embrace life, including the pain and uncertainty that we can’t honestly avoid as we all approach our end.

[For a deep read on this, see _The Birth and Death of Meaning_ and _The Denial of Death_ by Ernest Becker.]