On sunny summer days when my grandmother was alive, she would jump on her bicycle and ride to the local cemetery for a picnic lunch on her future gravesite. She and my grandfather had purchased the family plot (five graves in all) many years earlier and were proud of their good investment. Four spots were spoken for, but she liked to remind me that there was one extra spot if I ever needed it.

My grandparents purchased their plots in the glory days -- when nearly everyone in the United States was embalmed and buried, and when funeral directors were often among a community's most powerful and wealthy citizens. In "Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker-in-Training," his lively (ahem) new book on the funeral trade, Tom Jokinen explains how those glory days are quickly coming to a close, leaving the funeral industry scrambling to reinvent itself.

Jokinen, a radio producer and video journalist who has worked extensively for the Canadian Broadcasting Co., spent a year working as an apprentice undertaker in a Canadian funeral home. There, he learned about all sides of the trade, from preparing a body for viewing to dealing with competition from funeral homes owned by huge conglomerates. He spent time sorting through cremated remains, looking for bits of zipper or intact teeth, before processing them into a fine powder. And he stood graveside, silently watching myriad families grieve.

"When I think back on what I've learned -- how to find a man's femoral artery by touch, how to put a blouse on an old woman whose elbows are locked, how to bake and sort a human skeleton, how to jam 300 cubic inches' worth of meatpacker in a 200-cubic-inch container -- I see that I'm left with a very peculiar new skill set, but also, I hope, some new instinct for knowing what to do in the face of death."

In between the funny moments, Jokinen reflects on death traditions, finding comfort in the predictable ceremony of a local Mennonite community, or with the Jewish tradition of burying their dead simply, without embalming chemicals and expensive caskets. He explores the similarities between religious ceremony and typical North American funeral traditions -- both seek to make sense of death and promise us that we'll be cared for in perpetuity, whether in the afterlife or in a meticulously cared-for grave site.

Heavy philosophical thoughts aside, Jokinen's book is also filled with enlightening gems such as the lessons he learned from his co-worker Shannon, who uses Zep bug spray to "fog the dressing room to keep flies off the customers. 'The last thing you want is to open the casket and have a fly come out of someone's nose,' she says."

Or this lesson, which is a great piece of sound advice: "When threading a needle in the prep room, she says, resist the urge to put it in your mouth. Moisten the end with water from the sink: 'Never lick anything in a funeral home.'"

Kim Schmidt is a writer and book critic in Illinois.