Mortician Diaries: The Dead-Honest Truth from a Life Spent with Death

I loved this book. It made me laugh and it made me cry. It's highly entertaining! While I was looking more for a "gory" book, which this book really isn't, it's still definitely one of my favorite books now. If you're looking for a book full of gore and cuss words, this is not the book. However, if you are looking for a book filled with meaningful stories and interesting facts about morticians, then this is a great book!

I don't know exactly what I was expecting from Ms. Nadle's memoirs about her decades in the funeral business, but I was charmed to find her a tender yet strong, sensible, and introspective woman who - rather than be made cynical by her daily dances with death or seeing human tragedy (like the death of young people or babies) constantly - used her experiences to make her a more compassionate, life-affirming person. I finished this book wanting to meet June Nadle and have her over for tea. She is just an intelligent, endearing woman that you feel privileged to have met as you turn the last page of her memoir. She has written about what some would consider an - at best, undesirable, and to most, a disturbing - job in a beautiful, uplifting way. There is little that is dismal in this book. Even when hearing June retell the most tragic stories, she always finds and shares a silver lining or muses that, at the very least, we must remember never to take life for granted; indeed, she reminds us that life is a beautiful, precious, fleeting thing. In this way, June Nadle's treatise on working as an undertaker was, surprisingly, much more an affirmation of life than a narrative on death.

June has a wonderful way of presenting the intriguing stories then briefly discussing the significance of the experience. Through her stories she discusses teaching children about death, forgiving the dead, forgiving yourself after a loved one has died, stages of grief, and looking at death realisticly rather than with fear. Some stories are comical, some are heart-wrenching, and others are eye-opening. My husband and I read this book together and really enjoyed it! Thanks June!

Excellently written book. Written with love, compassion, and a deep understanding of love, life, and death. A must read for anyone and everyone!

You might not expect a memoir by an eighty-year-old woman to deal with topics such as gang warfare, AIDS, racism, unplanned pregnancies, and feminism, but this one does. You also might not expect a book called Mortician Diaries to be anything but morbid, but Nadle possesses the gift of bringing her over 50-year-long career as a mortician and her lust for life to the page. She's the kind of woman who visits cemeteries when she travels, to see how different cultures treat the dead. She uses phrases like "death care industry" and urges readers to create a "dialogue on death," but never lapses into a cold, analytical account. Every page is bursting with humanity, with people who are learning how to grieve in their own way. This book is as much about psychology as it is about death. June Nadle's Mortician's Diaries offer a rare, heartfelt, and wonderfully honest insight into the "highlights" of the career of a lifelong mortician, capturing some of the most emotionally intense and interesting stories from her years working with death. The grandmotherly Nadle doesn't shy away from the subject, and encourages her readers to openly confront and discuss death, not in an obsessive, morbid way, but to gain closure and be as prepared as possible when the time comes, even though sometimes death catches us anawares. She offers case studies, such as an elderly woman who planned every detail of her own funeral to the story of a mother clinging to her newly-dead baby, unable to accept his death despite the blood soaking his tiny body, until Nadle speaks to her mother to mother and allows her to see that her older children also need her to be present for them. Nadle does not judge her clients, but offers psychological insights into why denial rears its head and how natural it is. In "The Mother Who Risked Her Life to Grieve," Nadle tells of one service, after a gang-related drive-by shooting, that's interrupted by bullets, and the following day the trip to the ceremony is made along with patrol cars flanking the mourners. Her case studies are fascinating, and showcase a wide swath of humanity, across cultures and relationships. Friends, lovers, husbands, wives, parents, and children mourn for those they've lost as well as grapple with their sometimes conflicted relationships with the deceased. Nadle allows each of them to work their way toward mourning rather than pushing a socially-approved agenda or timeline onto them. She handles each one with dignity and compassion, and clearly attempts to understand the often-painful mix of emotions the bereaved feel. As someone who's always tried to escape talking about death, especially when it comes to my most loved ones, I welcomed Nadle's approach. She has seen deaths of humans and animals, often under horrific, or simply human, circumstances, and offers a brief glimpse into her wisdom and, most of all, her heart. By reading of the many who did not appreciate their loved ones during life, whether the parents who shunn