Caitlin Doughty, Artisanal Undertaker - The New Yorker

An excellent article about the movement to reclaim the way we deal with death -- to literally bring it home.

Caitlin Doughty, who was about to open her first funeral parlor, in Los Angeles, gazed at a skull that she had put on display above the desk in her office. Although it was plaster, the skull was a provocative presence in a room where Doughty planned to receive grieving families. It was mid-June, and that afternoon John Gettys, a field representative of the California Cemetery and Funeral Bureau, was coming to give the business a final inspection. Doughty, who is thirty, said, “I want the office to look like me, but I don’t want it to look too Arty Death Hipster.” 

Caitlin Doughty, Artisanal Undertaker - The New Yorker: