All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell

Sarah over at Wool + Home recommended All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell (and I wrote it down FOR ONCE), so thanks to her for bringing my attention to this compelling book.

It seems like I'm in a bit of a phase where I'm reading everything I can get my hands on about death. From Smoke Gets in Your Eyes to Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts, I'm finding this general topic to be simultaneously terrifying (we're all going to die someday) to reassuring (we're all going to die someday).  This book starts with the author admitting that she grew up in a house where death was sort of normalized, in that her father worked on a comic book about the Jack the Ripper case and had death scene photographs up where she could see them as a child. So she had questions, but didn't really see a dead person until she was an adult. 

Do you remember Working by Studs Terkel? It was a book where he interviewed people about their jobs and what they did all day at work. Some of the jobs are so dated now, but were cutting edge at their time. No one's talking about switchboard operators today, are they? If you've never flipped through at least a few pages of Working, I highly recommend it. Terkel was such a genius at asking the right questions to get people to talk about interesting things. I bet if Terkel interviewed me, he'd make it sound like even I had an interesting story. Anyway, THIS book is like Working, but focused on the death industry. 

In this book, Hayley Campbell spends time with people who work in the death industry, but not necessarily the people you might imagine when you think of the death industry. There were chapters devoted to a guy who makes death masks, a bereavement midwife who only works with families whose babies will not live, a guy whose company goes around to disaster sites to help companies and localities deal with families of people killed, and an executioner, among others. I didn't know there was such a thing as a bereavement midwife, nor did I know that many US states have official executioners.  

I didn't think that this book was particularly graphic, but it was hard to read. Thinking about how autopsies are done or what is done with the bodies of babies is challenging, or at least I think so. Maybe you, dear reader, are made of sterner stuff than I am. But I also freaked out when I walked past a dead squirrel on the sidewalk last weekend, so I'm maybe not the best gauge of this sort of thing. Campbell seems to share a similar feeling that the author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes does that most of us are far removed from death and that this has negative repercussions for society. (Also, sheesh! Funerals in the UK are frequently 2-3 WEEKS after someone has died. That does not happen in the US. If you don't have it within five days, people are side eyeing the family.)

Anyway, absolutely fascinating. I didn't know most of these jobs existed and it was super interesting to read about them. 4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

On the Tube home from the mortuary, I am aware of my own breathing, conscious of the fact that there are people lying in fridges who cannot. I am aware of the mechanisms of life: the fact that this meat machine moves, somehow, and then it doesn't. I look at people in the Tube carriage and I see death. I wonder if they own the clothes they will die in, I wonder who will take care of them when they are dead. (page 21)

Comedian Richard Herring has a podcast in which he has talked about something similar to this. Has the photo that will be used in your obituary been taken already? He had a cancer scare and had a lot of thoughts about mortality after that. 

Personal effects are not just stuff; he tells us that within an item that somebody had with them at the time they met their end there is untold emotional weight, and it is not for us to judge how heavy. (page 67)

I've never really thought about how important the stuff that surrounds you might be to your loved ones might be. I mean, I get important jewelry and clothing, but thinking about my laptop or the library book I'm reading as important seems...wrong somehow. 

The thing I discovered again and again in speaking to people who work with the dead is that nobody takes it in all at once. Nobody sees the whole of death, even if death is their job. The death machine works because each cog focuses on their one patch, their corner, their beat, like the work in the doll factory who paints the face and send the doll off somewhere else for her hair. Nobody collects the dead body from the roadside, autopsies it, embalms it, dresses it and pushes it into the fire. It is a series of people, connected in their industry, disconnected in their roles. (page 229-230)

I think this is what I'm most interested in by reading these books. I was there when my mother-in-law died in her bed. I was there for the funeral itself. I was there when they covered her grave with soil. But there were so many steps I missed and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Is our society doing it wrong by having us so far removed from death? 

Stuff I looked up:

Syndenham chorea (aka St Vitus Dance) - Andy Warhol suffered from this condition. It's a neurologic disorder that some children get after rheumatic fever or strep throat. It's characterized by rapid, uncoordinated jerking movements primary affecting the face, hands, and feet. 

Hat mentions:

'Jackarippy' was such a part of our lives that my tiny sister would wear the top hat to eat breakfast... (page 1) - It feels like cheating when it's on page one.

Look, hats came up a lot in this book (page 13, 51, 190 were others I noticed), but no one enjoys this scavenger hunt as much as I do, so I'm going to limit myself to this last one.

It's early evening and we're sitting at a table outside in December, besides glowing red heaters and drunk office workers in Santa hats...