In 2006, Tom Jokinen, a relatively well=paid and well-employed CBC radio producer quit his job in order to work as an apprentice in a small, third-generation family-owned funeral home in Winnipeg. He did it partly because he is of Finnish extraction: as he writes, a Finn's greatest pleasure in life is imagining exactly who might come to his funeral and what might happen there.
But mostly and seriously, he did it because he wanted to find out first-hand what goes on in that gap between death and burial at a time when our relationship with the dead is changing radically. And "Curtains" is about what he found, from the mundane to the macabre, from the completely comic to the totally heartfelt. Among the things he learned: in cremation, the head and the heart are the last things to burn: purple lipstick looks best on a dead man: and funeral directors have been known to dance during a service, out of sight of the funeral-goers and with utmost respect for the dead.

Well, it's not a pleasant job but someone has to do it. The things some people requested for funerals, the costs incurred and the commercialism involved astounded me. Personally I would like a sky burial but unfortunately you can only have that in Tibet (assuming the Chinese who have control of the country now still allow them to do it) though I doubt my relatives would want to pay to fly me out there. Maybe its for locals only anyway. I can just see a carrion bird sitting there looking at my corpse and saying "I don't want any of that foreign muck". I believe in life after death and would be happy for the body I've left behind to be recycled or used to help others in some way but I realise others may feel differently. I did like the author's final thoughts and the thanks offered in the acknowledgements. I understood the term "growing up funeral" as more than any other business, it is nearly always a family affair rather than a Corporate thing. People around here actually shudder if someone has a co-op funeral rather than a family firm.

Mailing out as part of the Occupational bookring.

Caught in the occupations bookring. Thank you