Oh hey! No cure for being human, and other truths I need to hear is coming out in the paperback edition.

So if you want, you can pick up a copy wherever books are sold.

Hello my dears, my name is Kate Boller and this is Everything Happens.

Thanks so much for listening in every week as we tackle topics that people don't necessarily

discuss at Ditter Parties and today's episode is no different.

We're talking about death, but I promise this conversation is one that you're going to feel better after listening to.

I wanted to talk to somebody who really understands the necessity of honesty around our losses.

So I asked someone who, for the last 50 years, has served as a funeral director in a small Michigan town

to talk about the kind of wisdom you can only have by standing so close to the edge,

with the living, with the dead, helping people be shepherded through the process of loving and letting go.

And he is funny and wise and has the economy of a poet which makes sense because he's one of those two.

You are going to love this one. This is one of my favorites. Here we go.

Thomas Lynch is the author of five collections of poems and four books of essays, including one of my new favorites.

I am completely in love with it. It's called The Undertaking.

Life studies from a dismal trade.

His work has been the subject of two award-winning documentaries, PBS Frontlines The Undertaking, which won an Emmy and a film produced for the BBC called Learning Gravity.

Thomas Lynch's essays, poems and stories have appeared in publications like The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Yorker.

He lives in Millford, Michigan, where he has been the funeral director since 1974.

Mr. Lynch, I'm sort of already obsessed with you. So you're going to have to tolerate that for the next bit.

Thank you so much for doing this with me today.

Thanks for your interest, Kate. You'll get over the obsession I promise.

So what kind of response do you normally get from people when they find out that you're a funeral director?

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