Thomas Lynch is a writer and a poet. For more than 30 years he also has been a funeral director in the small town of Milford, Mich. In this interview, he talks about his career as an undertaker, what he's observed - and learned - along the way, and why he feels the traditions and rituals of a funeral are at the very core of what it means to be human, helping us "to make some sense of life and living, dying and the dead."

Sean Lynch, 27, is funeral director assistant to his father Thomas Lynch, his brother Michael, and Wes Rice and Ken Kutzli at the Lynch & Sons funeral home in Milford, Mich., where he has worked since 1999. In this interview, he discusses his work helping prepare bodies and his conversations with families about whether or not to have an open casket, or the choice between cremation and burial. He also talks about what it is like to be always in the presence of death -- and what he has learned from that.