Olivia: Alright Jackson, I’m putting you on the spot. The book is Death’s Summer Coat. Give me your best, most hilariously wrong guess about what it’s about. Jackson: Easy. It’s a gritty detective novel where the Grim Reaper solves crimes in Miami during a heatwave. He wears a floral shirt over his robes. Olivia: I would absolutely read that! But no, today we are diving into Death's Summer Coat: What the History of Death and Dying Can Tell Us about Life and Living by Brandy Schillace. And what’s incredible is that the author’s personal story is just as unique as the book's topic. Jackson: Oh yeah? How so? Olivia: She grew up in an underground house built right next to a graveyard. Jackson: Okay, that explains a lot. You don't have that childhood and then go on to write books about, say, tax law. Olivia: Exactly. It gave her this lifelong, deeply personal fascination with how we handle mortality. She’s a historian and works in medical humanities, so she brings this amazing blend of academic rigor and very human storytelling to a subject most of us would rather avoid. Jackson: Which is kind of the whole point, isn't it? Our avoidance. Olivia: It’s the central problem. And the book argues that this avoidance is a very modern, and very Western, invention. We’ve forgotten how to die.

Jackson: That’s a bold claim. "Forgotten how to die." What does that even look like in practice? It feels like we’re obsessed with prolonging life, which sounds like a good thing. Olivia: It sounds good, but Schillace points out how it curdles into something else. She tells this heartbreaking personal story about her best friend's mother, who was dying of breast cancer. This woman knew she was dying and she desperately wanted to talk about it—to prepare, to process, to say goodbye. Jackson: That makes perfect sense. It’s the one time you should be talking about it. Olivia: You’d think. But every time she tried, her family and friends would shut her down. They’d say, "Don't talk like that," or "You have to stay positive." She was literally being silenced about the most profound event of her life as it was happening to her. The book has this killer line: "The last thing we are supposed (or allowed) to do when preparing to meet death is talk about death." Jackson: Wow. That’s an incredibly lonely place to be. You’re surrounded by people who love you, but you can't talk about the one thing that’s on your mind 24/7. Olivia: Exactly. And this personal story is a microcosm of a much larger cultural shift. We’ve medicalized death. It’s no longer a natural part of life; it’s a medical failure. A disease to be fought at all costs. Schillace brings up the famous case of Terri Schiavo. Jackson: I remember that. It was a huge legal and media circus for years. Olivia: A seven-year legal battle, multiple Supreme Court appeals, all to decide whether to remove a feeding tube from a woman in a persistent vegetative state. The medical system’s impulse was just to keep the body going, to keep "doing things," as one doctor in the book says. The question of what it meant for her, for her life, got lost in the war against death itself. Jackson: And that’s the "Great Disconnect" you’re talking about. We’re so focused on the biological event of dying that we’ve lost the human process of it. Olivia: Precisely. We’ve sanitized it, hidden it away in hospitals, and turned it into a technical problem for doctors to solve. We’ve created what Schillace calls a "protective barrier" from the reality of death, but that barrier leaves us utterly unprepared and alone when it’s our turn to face it. Jackson: So if we're doing it so wrong, who's doing it right? Or at least... differently? Olivia: Well, "right" is subjective, but the book takes us on this incredible world tour of death rituals that will challenge everything you think is normal. And some of them are, frankly, shocking.

Jackson: Okay, I’m bracing myself. How shocking are we talking? Olivia: Let’s start with the Wari people of the Brazilian rainforest. Until the 1960s, their primary way of dealing with a dead loved one was a practice called mortuary cannibalism. Jackson: Hold on. They ate their dead? Out of respect? My brain just short-circuited. Olivia: I know, it sounds completely barbaric to our modern ears. But Schillace unpacks the logic, and it’s profoundly beautiful. The Wari believed that leaving a loved one’s body to rot in the cold, wet ground was the ultimate act of disrespect and abandonment. It was lonely and horrifying to them. Jackson: So... eating them was the better option? Olivia: It was an act of compassionate recycling. By consuming the body, they were taking their loved one back into the warm, living bodies of the community. They were literally sharing the burden of grief and ensuring the person wasn't left alone. It was done slowly, with tears, by relatives—but not the closest kin, as their grief was too strong. It was about destroying the physical reminder of the loss to help the memory transform. Jackson: That... is a completely different way of thinking about a body. For us, the body is this sacred, untouchable thing. For them, the sacred thing was the person's integration back into the community. Olivia: Exactly. It forces you to ask: what is our own practice of embalming and sealing a body in a metal box really about? Is it about honoring the person, or is it about our own fear of decay and our desire to pretend death isn't real? Jackson: That’s a tough question. Okay, give me another one. Something maybe a little less... visceral. Olivia: Let's jump to Victorian England. They weren't eating their dead, but they were definitely getting up close and personal with them through something called memento mori photography. Jackson: "Memento mori"—that means "remember you must die," right? Olivia: You got it. And for the Victorians, one way to do that was to take photographs of their recently deceased loved ones, especially children, since child mortality was so high. But they wouldn't just take a picture of the body in a casket. Jackson: What did they do? Olivia: They would pose them. They’d prop the child up in a chair, maybe with their favorite toy, or place a baby in a crib as if it were just sleeping. Sometimes, the living family members would pose right alongside them—a mother holding her deceased infant, or siblings standing next to their dead brother. Jackson: So the first family portraits were... with corpses? That is incredibly morbid. Olivia: It feels that way to us! But Schillace argues it was the opposite. It was an act of love and remembrance. Photography was new and expensive. For many, this was the only photograph they would ever have of their child. It was a way to secure the shadow before the substance faded forever. It shows a familiarity with death that we’ve completely lost. They lived with death so closely that it wasn't this horrifying, alien thing. It was just... sad. And part of life. Jackson: It's wild. We have thousands of digital photos of our loved ones, but the idea of taking one after they've died feels like a massive violation. Olivia: And that's the point. We've gone from eating the dead and posing with them to not even being able to say the word 'die' in a hospital room. So how do we get back? How do we find some of that meaning without, you know, setting up a photo shoot at the funeral home?

Olivia: That’s the question the last part of the book tackles. Schillace shows that there's a growing movement of people who are actively trying to reclaim this lost ground. It’s often called the "death-positive" movement. Jackson: I’ve heard that term. It sounds a bit like forced optimism. Like, "Death is great!" which... it isn't. Olivia: It's not about saying death is great. It's about saying that talking about death is healthy and necessary. The book explores the rise of things like Death Cafes. Jackson: Right, where people literally get together for coffee and cake and talk about mortality. Olivia: Exactly. Or the "Death Over Dinner" project, which encourages people to have these conversations with their families in a comfortable setting. It’s about creating a dedicated space for a conversation our culture has pushed out of every other part of our lives. Jackson: I can see the value in that, but I also get the skepticism. The book mentions a critic who called this stuff a "self-deluding fantasy of upper-class twits" who don't know about real death. Is this just a trend for the privileged who have the luxury to intellectualize mortality? Olivia: Schillace addresses that head-on. And it’s a valid critique to consider. But the book argues that the need is real and universal. We live in what one person calls a "wilderness of dying." We have no maps. The old religious and community rituals that used to guide people through this process have faded for many, and nothing has replaced them except the cold, sterile environment of the ICU. Jackson: So these Death Cafes are like... DIY community rituals. Olivia: In a way, yes. They are a response to a crisis. A crisis in how we care for the dying, and a crisis of meaning. The book talks about how doctors themselves are often trained to see death as a personal failure, leaving them emotionally unequipped to help patients navigate it. One doctor calls for physicians to learn to be "midwives to the dying," helping to ease the passage, not just fight a losing battle. Jackson: A death midwife. That’s a powerful image. It reframes the whole goal. It’s not about winning or losing, but about facilitating a humane experience. Olivia: And that’s what these new movements are trying to do. They’re creating the language and the spaces for us to think about what a "good death" might look like for ourselves and our loved ones. It’s not about being morbid; it’s about being prepared. It’s about living more fully by not being terrified of the ending.

Jackson: So, when you boil it all down, what’s the one big idea we should take away from Death’s Summer Coat? Olivia: I think it’s that our modern fear of death is a cultural choice, not a human necessity. We’ve been taught to fear it, to fight it, to deny it. But for most of human history, and in many cultures still today, death was and is an integrated part of life. The lesson from the Wari, the Victorians, and all these other cultures isn't that we should copy their specific rituals. Jackson: Right, I’m not planning a cannibalistic funeral anytime soon. Olivia: Please don't. The lesson is that the antidote to fear is connection and conversation. The act of sharing stories, of sitting with the dead, of talking openly about our mortality—that’s the universal human technology for dealing with grief and loss. We just forgot how to use it. Jackson: And the book's title, Death's Summer Coat... I think I finally get it. Olivia: It’s a beautiful metaphor from the end of the book. The idea is that we should put on "death's summer coat"—we should talk about and prepare for the winter of death while it’s still the summer of our lives. When we're warm, and safe, and can think clearly. Not when we're in the middle of the blizzard of grief and crisis. Jackson: That’s a powerful way to frame it. It makes it feel less like a morbid chore and more like a wise, compassionate act of preparation. It really makes you think... what's one conversation about this that you've been putting off, and who do you need to have it with? Olivia: Food for thought. Until next time. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.