Your Mortician
Caitlin, your mortician, was born on a balmy August evening on the cruel, unforgiving shores of O’ahu, Hawai’i.
An even tempered, bookish child, there was little reason to believe that she would ultimately seek the life of a psychopomp, tiptoeing the line between the living and dead. It was only when she began to ask the pertinent questions that her parents began to suspect a proclivity towards the macabre. Example: “Mommy, if I was on the edge of that cliff and I fell off and on the way down screamed ‘Mommy, Mommy, I need you Mommy why won’t you help me’ and then smashed my body on the rocks, would you be sad?”
After completing high school, Caitlin fled her island home on the first plane east to Chicago. In the comparatively frigid halls of the University of Chicago, she worked towards her degree in Medieval History. Her thesis, entitled “In Our Image: The Suppression of Demonic Births In Late Medieval Witchcraft Theory,” is a must read for all lovers of demon sex and the medieval church.
A year out of college found your mortician living in California, where she began to apply to crematories in an attempt to put into practice her theoretical death interests. Since her first job as a funeral arranger she has worked as a crematory operator, a body van transport driver, and returned to school for her degree in Mortuary Science. She is currently a licensed funeral director in Los Angeles.
The Order was inspired by several historical groups. The name itself is taken from the 19th century Brazilian sisterhood of African slaves Irmandade da Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte, or, Sisterhood of Our Lady of the Good Death. It is similarly inspired by the medieval Ars Moriendi (Art of Dying) as well as the Tibetan Bardo Thodol.
“We fall asleep and never wake again;
Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh,
Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh
In earth, air, water, plants, and other men”
-James Thomson (1874)
Should you wish to reach your mortician for any reason, including to discuss your impending demise, she can be reached at orderofthegooddeath@gmail.com