He runs a funeral home in Milford, Mich., and he buries about 200 of his townspeople every year. Lynch is also a poet who gets published in the nation's most prestigious magazines, and he writes books, mostly poetry books.

But now he has written an award-winning book about -- what else? -- his work. In fact, the book is called "The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade" (Pilgrim, $12.95), and it is an excellent read.

One of the facts about publishing in America is that few people write books about death. It's simply too depressing.

Lynch's book offers a very honest and authentic look at the life that surrounds death -- the people who mourn and those who do not. And Lynch writes beautifully, with a softness that comforts and a hardness we all need. Here's one of the hard passages:

"There's this 'just a shell' theory of how we ought to relate to dead bodies. ... You hear it when you bring a mother and a father in for the first sight of their dead daughter, killed in a car wreck or left out to rot by some mannish violence ...

"I once saw an Episcopalian deacon nearly decked by the swift slap of the mother of a teen-ager, dead of leukemia, to whom she tendered this counsel. 'I'll tell you when it's just a shell,' the woman said. 'For now and until I tell you otherwise, she's my daughter.'

"She was asserting the long-standing right of the living to declare the dead dead. Just as we declare the living alive through baptisms, lovers in love by nuptials, funerals are the way we close the gap between the death that happens and the death that matters. It's how we assign meaning to our little remarkable histories."

But there is another side to Lynch. Meet him in person and he will captivate you in minutes because he is authentic -- not a dishonest cell in his head. I asked him why he became a writer.

"I don't golf," he said. "I had to stop drinking. And I'm married to an Italian woman, who has brothers, so I can't (run) around. So writing seemed like a good thing."

The conversation soon turned to funerals, grief and death -- and clergy. I've done my share of funerals -- standing at the grave of a Vietnam vet killed in action, or preaching the sermon for a woman who literally died of a broken heart.

"The clergy who really understand what ministry is are ready to say to an angry family, I don't know," Lynch said. "I don't know why your 16-year-old son is dead.

"Nobody can fix it," Lynch said. "The pastor can't fix it, the doctor can't, the funeral director can't. It can't be fixed. But if we stay with the grieving people long enough, perhaps we can do some good. Our biggest mistake is trying to fix things when they can't be fixed."

But in matters of death, just about everyone is uncomfortable, and caring for grieving people becomes a burden that sometimes consumes the caregivers.

"Everyone can spot a pastor who is burned out, or a doctor or a funeral director," Lynch said. "The funeral director wants to sell you a casket. The pastor wants to save your soul. The doctor treats your body like a part."

One of the trends that has Lynch a bit concerned is the practice of people creating their own rituals for funerals -- Lynch calls it "rolling their own rituals." Here's one of the final paragraphs in the book:

"They used to have this year of mourning. Folks wore armbands, black clothes, played no music in the house. Black wreathes were hung at the front doors. The damaged were identified. For a full year you were allowed your grief -- the dreams and sleeplessness, the sadness, the rage. The weeping and giggling in all the wrong places. The catch in your breath at the sound of a name. After a year, you would be back to normal. 'Time heals' is what was said to explain this. If not, of course, you were pronounced some version of crazy and in need of some professional help."

This is a book that should be read by every clergy person and seminary student living in an English-speaking country. Not only is it a beauty to read, but it contains unstrained truth about death and life.

Clark D. Morphew