One way to cope with losing someone is to move closer to death rather than away from it. A grieving teenager took a job at the funeral home that handled her aunt, wanting answers and wanting to know the dead were in good hands. She found comfort there, and a single summer stretched into nine years.
An undertaker's business rises and falls with whatever is killing the neighborhood. Where disease and street violence are cutting down a generation of young men, the funeral home is never short of work. Its client list becomes a record of the community's crises.
People who serve the grieving learn to hold their own feelings back so the families can fall apart. The workers see families in their most private moments of despair, yet the rule is to expect the unexpected and never, ever cry. That steady exposure adds up, leaving one worker feeling she had already died a hundred deaths.
Grief does not push out absurdity; the two show up at the same services. There are fights between a dead man's mistresses and his widow, a hearse crash in a fast-food drive-through, and a drive-by shooting outside a funeral. Such comic or chaotic moments are a normal part of the work, not exceptions to it.
Mourning customs change to fit the community's everyday style rather than older formal norms. Printed memorial T-shirts with the dead person's photo often replace suits and ties. Some people are buried with a joint or a bottle of cognac. Across very different kinds of death, what families share is a need for closure.