Just ask Thomas Lynch. He's just written a whole book about it. "The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade" is the testamony of poet and funeral director Thomas Lynch. A funeral director who likes to write poems has a lot to say and "The Undertaking" does just that. A National Book Award finalist, the book is the bridge between the living and the living who have died.

With plain spoken honesty he starts, "Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople." It makes you smile. It makes you think. Thy are the words of a poet who just happens to make his living with the dead. With simple language, yet full of compassion, honesty, humanity, and vitality, the book is a tool, a teacher, a giver of knowledge and wisdom of those gone.

Within its pages there are stories of parents who have died and to children who shouldn't have. There are golfers, hypochondriacs, lovers, and suicide victims. The stories make us laugh, make up cheer, make us cry. Lynch writes with a lyrical tone, i.e. "Events unfold in ways that make us think of God." The book is full of these instances and examples of death and life, love and loss.