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.”
Explore additional reporting in connection with “The Undertaking” on our website:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/undertaking/
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FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Park Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen.
CHAPTERS:
Prologue – 00:00
Three Generations of Funeral Directors: Meet the Lynch Family – 01:16
Making Funeral Arrangements, for the Old and the Young – 05:44
What Is an Undertaker’s Job Like? – 15:44
Confronting Death: ‘Reality Can No Longer Be Denied’ – 20:54
How Families Navigate Loved Ones’ Deaths – 30:40
Embalming the Dead for Open-Casket Funerals – 40:20
Coda: ‘The Dead Matter to the Living’ – 50:07
Credits – 51:50
Anthony is a little angel.
Death is profitable. Death is a business, and these people who take care of our dead sees my loved ones as a paycheck. Death is part of life, which these artistic poems write books are vultures, and use our grieving as an opportunity to fleece family members. Even if he appears so compassionate, uses our grief an opportunity to add into their own pockets. Seems unlimitedly their profit line is unlimited, oh they are concerned to get paid. Mortuary takes advantage of us, the living, and knowing enough they could rob us of a everything financially and if we can't pay, too bad your loved one can get quickly thrown into a poor man's grave. Even my finite existence will come to an end, but more concerned is the afterlife, not the body, or anything to deal with it. Let me clear, as among who read this, I believe in God, but as for my body, love life, and because I believe in the 10 commandments, would suffer than like some quickly and very inhumane choose suicide, it's a coward's way out and because the soul lives in eternally forever as God created suicide is unnatural, breaking God's law, tho shall not murder, suicide is self murder of one's self, Roman Catholic, a person who suicides goes to hell, punishment is unimaginable torture by human understanding beyond our comprehension. This will disturb many, I am sorry but it's the truth, horribly suffering, the suffering continues after a person takes their life into the afterlife suffering continues throwing eternity. I love life, never have ever in my entire life still love even if having bad times would never consider ending because I love life, love God, and God's laws are clear, but God has appointed hour, we never know it, and I care of living, but don't fear death because God existence, and laws are respected always. God loves us, and if you light a candle instead of cursing the darkness. God is that light.
I remember when my mom was dying, a nurse said something that really stuck with me. She said you don’t get over it when someone dies, rather you get through it. She was so right.
I preplanned my funeral when I was in my 30’s. I’m now 52 and I almost died on June 2nd in a car accident. It has made me so thankful I planned it so nobody else has to when the time comes. It’s something we shouldn’t shy away from, planning ahead. It’s a conversation we should all have with our loved ones.
Well meaning people do not know the right thing to say during a death. â¤â¤
& thats why i name you as my adanced director, I trust you to carry out my final wishes. I trust that you will carry out my final work wishes.
The baby's parents were so loving and caring of him from his birth to his death. What a blessing to have parents like that.
This kind of funeral is EXTREMELY expensive right now. Cremation is expensive too but it is currently about 4500.
Excellent program
Heartbreaking when a child must leave before a life could be lived.
All we can do is trust that God had his reasons.
When the weeping is done, all we can do is carry on…….
This was beautiful and strangely comforting.
Yes I didn’t have a funeral for my 52 year old husband who died a week before Christmas. He was cremated and when we had the memorial service in January (after everyone had celebrated the holidays) he was very much there. His body was not dressed up in a coffin it was in a steel box. He was there.
Very interesting
very special people…and they dress soooo well!
My father died almost ten years ago from cancer. I can remember going to the funeral home with my mother and my sister and picking out which casket he was going to be in and the mortician and his staff did a very nice job. They were very respectful and polite and it was much appreciated by my family and me. Another mortician purchased the funeral home and he'll have my mom one day and then myself as well. My heart was really breaking for that little boy, Anthony John, and his parents. Actually, I felt for all of the people that were featured on here. Those little details that this mortician and his staff paid attention to are very important. Sometimes, the little things are actually the big things that make a difference. I had contemplated cremation but decided to be buried next to my parents one day when my time comes. I'm 47 now and I know that I won't live forever, at least not in this world and in this body. To the ones who did this documentary and to the ones who it featured, thank you for a very respectful presentation. I hope and pray I have many more trips around the sun but that is up to my Lord and Savior.
God Bless those families but Especially that little child Anthony…. my heart aches for his parents.
I had no idea you could witness the cremation. I wish I had known for my mother death, but grateful I know now.
Wonderful film . Wonderful man. Read his book. It’s very good.
Beautiful words and sentiments…. but nothing more to me as MORTICIAN SCHOOL !
ALL SO GHOULISH !!
EMBALBING AND CASKETS ARE ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING
All funeral homes take advantage of people pain to make you spend more money than why do you actually have most of the time they are like factories they are sales people they want to make more money off of you. All of them are..
I'm definitely going for cremation! I honestly don't understand why people still choose burial these days with so many ioher optiins, such as cremation, ecologically sound burial pods, etc. Interesting watch though!
A friend of mine has been doing this, not sure how long. His father in law is the head person. Another friend of mine has just sold his business. He , his father and brothers had the funeral business. Don’t know what it’s going to be called now.
I’d like to die in either the Spring or Fall, preferably.
24:29
21:02 confronting death full
34:04 That day
43:51 real
The last half resonates
Thank God for the Lynch family. They are dignified and thoughtful, and do a great service to grieving families â¤.
Im 18 and my grandpa whom i call my papa passed this year. I lived with him for the last 7 years aside from seeing him all the time as a kid. I actually remember praying for deliverance of his soul. In ways i feel guilty for. But to see his pain..the swelling in his hands and feet..the fading cups of his eyes. I knew it was going to be over soon, and I wanted my papa to be free of all of that suffering. When I lost him to cardiac arrest, i blamed myself for not visiting him that very day. I will never forget the coldness on my lips when i kissed his forehead goodbye for the last time ever. He will always be my papa and i’ll always be his baby girl. I miss him every second of every single day. If life means nothing than surely this comment might not, but it could suffice to something i suppose
Very excellent documentary. Especially touching were the parts with the two year old facing death, his parents reactions, and the sorrow of burying children. Never really thought about the viewing and even doing a viewing before cremation being an important part of processing death. Old enough to have had the experience of seeing at least a couple of people dying. I really enjoyed the narration. Very poignant. “In accompanying the dead, getting them where they need to go, we get to where we need to be…â€
The respect is so important for the family left.
watch this knowing the life is sacred …..and the death too
Wow! I came across this video by accident, but I'm so glad I did. Respect to those funeral directors. I wasn't expecting to cry like a baby but here I am.
I went about ten minutes into this documentary and then shut it off. The funeral director laments that memorial services are being held without the deceased being physically present. Grief is an individual process and one size does not fit all. My father was in the final hours of life when I showed him a video of my son expressing love and gratitude for his grandfather. My Dad smiled broadly, at peace that while his end was near, our family would go on. And that is how I remember Dad: smiling with just hours to go. We had a memorial service for Dad a few days after a private burial. To suggest that we were wrong for not having his corpse at the memorial is abominable.
is everyone in Michigan this well spoken and compassionate?
12:47 some of the toughest people I’ve ever seen. God bless them through this difficult time even though I am seeing this video far after its release
R.i.p little angel
They didn't show the body prep, too gruesome. Using scalpal to cut the Severing either L-R side of neck then severing the cathoid artery, then severing of femerol vein in lower leg then
Using a long pearicing rod that has a rotary cutter that cuts like a blender and vaccumns, connevted to a vacuum insert rod ( stab) into belly button inserting rod up as far as lungs chopping up and sucking out the lungs, heRt, liver, kidneys stomach, intestins, evacuating the entire inner organs..VERY GROSS AND AUDABLE TO WATCH AND HEAR…Then inserting another line into cathoid artery in neck, turning on pump pushing 2.5 gls of roses pink ( for complexion) pushing all blood out draining at foot of table, after 2.5 gl tank empty, pour paraformaldehyde to close the wounds then stitch with heavy thick stitching. Then sew the lower jaw up through the upper mouth behind the front teeth then the front teeth inside the gums permanantly closing the mouth, then CRAZY GLUE the lips and eyelids shut.
THEN…they begin this video type Cosmetic work.
It's a very violent thing that happens to a body in a mortician basement.
I'm 66 now but when I was 17 dating the sister in law of a mortician who asked me to help him with a "Removal" to his shop he asked me to stay and help me lift the body as hisbody elevator broke and I stayed to watch what would become to this day a vision, a nightmare I could never purge…
I'm being cremated.
Mr. Lynch’s book is a fantastic take on life, death and the service he and his family provide. Highly recommend!
How vital pre arrangements made in a person's death is. It takes much of the burdens after. I have helped family prepare their desires for their own funerals. Thank you so much for the information given.
It's not that I haven't experienced death in my family because I have. My father died in 1989 and his wish was to be cremated, so that is what we did and had a separate day of remembrance for him. When it was our mothers time we did the same except that there were almost no one left to come to a service so there was a simple internment.
I find it ironic that people will pay more for a casket than they will for a piece of furniture to display and use in their homes. Some will go into significant debt in order to do so for a public funeral.
Balance in birth, life and death
Tragic and beautiful at the same time.
As a Bible believer and Christian man, it breaks my heart that this older woman, never got “Saved,†simply by believing on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Like my old neighbor that has been dead for about 5 years now, my dear wife, very lovingly tried to give him the Gospel and later even his much younger son , who preceded him in death, but sadly, they both rejected the free gift that Jesus Christ gives us all. Many people think, if they were a pretty good person all their lives and did everything as most people would consider good moral standing, but they are sorely mistaken. Eternity in Hell, of fire, pain, suffering, burning, is beyond imaginable to me!
If you know what goes into the embalming process you would go for cremation.
Choosing caskets based upon what might get into it. So dumb. You're dead, it doesn't matter! You are going to be a skeleton in a few years anyway. As dumb as "don't cremate me I don't want to burn." You're dead!
Beautiful documentary
My mother planned her memorial and organized her finances before her death, she wasn’t sick or anything but did us a huge favor by doing all the planning. We each got a folder with all her financial info and pass codes etc. Then a few years later she got hit by a car, crossing the road. And she died. We were fortunate that she had taken the time and prepared her exit from the world. I have now followed suit.
Mr. Lynch has the most beautiful way with words. I truly enjoyed this documentary.