Now Departing
A Small-Town Mortician on Death, Life, and the Moments in Between
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
In this unique and thoughtful collection, a young funeral director—also known as “the internet’s favorite mortician” (CNBC)—explores various aspects of death, offering heartfelt and practical insights into how we determine what matters most while we are alive. This evocative book is for fans of Thomas Lynch, Mary Roach, and Caitlin Doughty.
Now Departing explores the science, craft, and mindfulness behind Victor M. Sweeney’s very peculiar skill set. Working in the funeral business since he was eighteen years old, Sweeney astutely shares the powerful and moving lessons of how we can exist and be remembered with intention and meaning.
Each page is filled with reflective observations and true stories from the lives and deaths that Sweeney has come to know through his work in a small Minnesota town. With grace and understanding, he also explores the rituals around preparing and saying goodbye to those we mourn; the love and forgiveness that arises in the face of grief; the universal interplay of walking between the chasm of the mundanity of a required business practice that touches on humanity’s deepest metaphysical realities; and ultimately, how loss gives us the opportunity to focus on and celebrate the elements we have gained.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Midwestern mortician shares homespun reflections on American funeral traditions in this quaint debut account. Sweeney—who wanted to be a priest before "stumbl into funeral service" at 18—starkly outlines the details of what he calls deathcare, covering embalming, makeup, and dressing the body for an open casket viewing. He then relaxes into a more considered meditation on what it means to handle "the bodies of the dead with enough grace to touch the souls of the living," highlighting interactions with cash-strapped mourners (Debra, a waitress at Dairy Queen, paid for her husband's headstone in installments whenever Sweeney got ice cream with his family) and how to comfort the bereaved. Throughout, he centers the importance of making death comprehensible to communities and individuals in a culture that can be squeamish about discussing "the fate that awaits us at the end of our days." For Sweeney, however, death enables people to appreciate life's ephemerality. The combination of musings on the place of death in modern society and quirky anecdotes of small-town Minnesota life makes for a surprisingly cozy look at what it means to meet the end.
