Now Departing: A Small-Town Mortician on Death, Life, and the Moments in Between

A Midwestern mortician shares homespun reflections on American funeral traditions in this quaint debut account. Sweeney—who wanted to be a priest before “stumbl[ing] 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. (Oct.)