Enter the world of an undertaker whose family for three generations has cared for both the living and the dead in a small Michigan town, as families navigate loss, grief and mortality. (Aired 2007)

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Thomas Lynch is a writer and a poet. He's also a funeral director in a small town in central Michigan where he and his family have cared for the dead -- and the living -- for three generations. Moving and powerful, the 2007 documentary “The Undertaking” chronicles the intimate stories of families confronting loss, and the role of funeral rituals in helping them come to terms with their loved ones’ deaths.

"Funerals are the way we close the gap between the death that happens and the death that matters," Lynch says in the documentary. "A good funeral gets the dead where they need to go and the living where they need to be."