David Sloan

So, the simple explanation, and it's not that simple, but I grew up in a cemetery.

My father was superintendent of a 200-acre cemetery in Syracuse, New York.

It's a great place to play, as long as you're not doing anything too stupid.

And your friends, as I say in the second book I wrote, we didn't have any sleepovers.

To me, it was just where I was.

I was there from the time I was six weeks old.

So I actually worked in the cemetery starting when I was 13 and all the way into my 20s.

I buried babies.

I was part of a crew that buried full bodies and cremations.

I filled graves, almost all the things that you would do in a cemetery.

So I have a more intimate, personal relationship with it.

And then I began to create a professional relationship with my dissertation.

You know, I think it in some sense made me

more aware of the practicalities of death.

And so I didn't really feel the way that most Americans feel, where they felt a distance, an incredible distance from death.

You know, I watched my father or listened to my father help grieving widows.

You know, I've met with families when I was going to bury their baby.

I mean, I wasn't in a position where I could be so far away that I could live the American way of death.

I was much more, you know, the death is part of life, it's part of how we live, and it's part of the natural cycle of this body of mine and yours.

Nobody's been able to figure out a way not to die.