What Students/Young Adults Can Learn from Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Students and young adults are often at the exact age Caitlin Doughty was when she took a job at a crematory, old enough to be making real decisions about the future, but rarely asked to think seriously about mortality until a grandparent's decline forces the question. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes describes a young person discovering that her entire upbringing had trained her to treat death as distant and someone else's responsibility. For students juggling school, early jobs, and first steps toward independence, that same distance shows up as a total absence of planning, no conversations about a grandparent's wishes, no sense of how funeral or estate decisions actually work, until suddenly they are the ones being asked to help decide, often without warning and without the vocabulary to ask good questions.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The campus bubble that keeps death offscreen
Just as funeral culture moves a body out of sight fast, student life is structured to keep mortality offscreen almost entirely, no one plans a syllabus around it, and dorm life rarely intersects with hospital visits or funerals until a family member's decline forces the issue.
Students treat a grandparent's illness as an interruption to normal life rather than information worth engaging with directly, and miss the chance to ask questions while there is still time.
This week, ask one older relative one direct question about their wishes or their life story before assuming there will always be more time.
Showing up changes how you process loss
Doughty found that people who stayed close to death, who visited, who were present, processed loss more honestly than those who let distance and other people's management stand in for their own understanding.
Distance, a demanding class schedule, or simple discomfort leads students to skip visits or hard conversations, assuming a phone call is close enough.
If visiting an aging relative is possible this month, go in person even briefly, rather than defaulting to a text or call.
Hospitals and funeral homes are not neutral guides
Doughty shows how funeral homes can steer families, often young and inexperienced ones, toward costlier decisions than necessary. Students helping coordinate a relative's care or funeral for the first time are especially vulnerable to accepting the first option presented without knowing cheaper or more fitting alternatives exist.
Young adults, unfamiliar with how funeral pricing or hospital billing works, agree to whatever is proposed rather than asking what other options are available.
If you are ever involved in funeral or care decisions, ask directly for an itemized list of options and prices before agreeing to anything.
Memento mori as a planning habit to start young
Doughty frames regular awareness of mortality, memento mori, as a habit that sharpens present-tense choices, not a dark fixation reserved for later in life. For a young adult, that might mean starting basic future planning, a simple will, knowing a family member's wishes, decades earlier than most people do. Starting this awareness young tends to produce calmer decision-making later, rather than being caught unprepared when a real decision arrives.
The pull toward showing up in person for aging relatives can conflict with real constraints of school, distance, and money that most students actually face. The point is not guilt over limited resources, but making the visits and conversations you can afford count, and asking direct questions even when you cannot always be physically present.
Name one thing, honestly
- What do you actually know about an older relative's end-of-life wishes right now? - Where has distance or busyness kept you from a conversation you have been meaning to have? - What would it take to start basic future planning of your own this year?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
If you are ever involved in funeral or care decisions, ask directly for an itemized list of options and prices before agreeing to anything.