Hi, my name is Maggie Jones. I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine, and I teach writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

I wrote a story about a year ago about a group of people who call themselves Home Funeral Guides, and their mission is to help us be less afraid and more in touch with death.

You might think that the story about Home Funeral is incredibly depressing, and I get that. It's a story about death and loss.

But in the course of my reporting about it, I actually found this process to be incredibly life-affirming and even beautiful.

Usually in this country, as soon as somebody dies, the ambulance or the funeral home comes almost right away. It can be within minutes.

And that may be the last time you see the body. It gets whisked away, and that's it.

In the Home Funeral movement, the idea is instead that after your loved one dies, you might spend several hours with them or you might spend up to three days.

The Home Funeral Guides are there to let the families have as much control over the process as they want.

That may mean that they want to dress and bathe the body, comb their hair. They may want to put lots of flowers around the room and play music and like candles.

And the key is it's what the family wants.

Death is out of our control. There's nothing we can do. We don't get to decide when loved ones die, when we die.

But the power of this movement is that it returns a bit of that control to families. And that can be profoundly comforting.

I think for me, the message is that we don't have to rush death. And in fact, sitting with it can make the process a little easier.

So here's my story, the movement to bring death closer, read by January LeVoy.

Heidi Boucher loaded two big straw baskets into her Toyota Highlander. She always kept them packed, ready for death.

Inside were a pair of leather work gloves and a hammer, a bunch of bedpads, a few adult diapers, dead bodies sometimes leak, q-tips for cleaning ears, noses and mouths and for applying lipstick, cotton balls, disinfectant spray, a plastic zip bag of safety pins to help drape silk and other fabrics around a gurney or casket.

A small screwdriver to tightly close a casket, latex gloves, a hairbrush and oils infused with rose, lavender and rosemary.

Boucher also had her black attaché case of paperwork on funeral planning, which included a few funeral home price lists for cremation and other services, as well as the files of 20 or so clients who had already made plans for Boucher to help with their bodies after death.

Among them was Susan LaRueur, a 79-year-old wife, mother, grandmother, reading teacher at a community college, lover of nature, spontaneity and books.

LaRueur had died about an hour earlier in her home in Oakland, California, and Boucher was on her way to her.

Over the last few decades, Boucher has helped more than 100 families take care of loved ones' bodies in the hours and days after death.

Some of their deaths were long expected, whether from cancer, multiple sclerosis or another chronic disease.

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