Don't Fear the Reaper

Rod Searcey

By Marie C. Baca

Dying is not a subject most people like to dwell on. But then, Irvin and Marilyn Yalom aren’t most people. This year each released a book related to shuffling off this mortal coil: Irvin’s Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death and Marilyn’s The American Resting Place: Four Hundred Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds.

The 12th book for Irvin Yalom, a professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Staring at the Sun probes the origins of death anxiety and discusses ways to address these fears. As with his 1989 bestseller, Love’s Executioner, Yalom weaves together conversations with patients and insights from his own life experiences.

Marilyn Yalom’s The American Resting Place is equal parts historical survey and travelogue, with plenty of trivia thrown in for good measure. (Which European country prohibits cremation? Greece.) A senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Marilyn visited some 250 cemeteries over the course of three years, noting everything from gravestone markings to rituals of remembrance. She was accompanied by their son, photographer Reid S. Yalom, ’78, who contributed 82 black-and-white images to the project.

The husband-and-wife duo has teamed up for a series of speaking engagements they cheerfully dub the “Gloom and Doom” tour. “We’ve had a good turnout at the events,” Irvin says, “but we aren’t very popular at dinner parties these days.”

—MARIE C. BACA, ’06