Switching Heads

At an age when most boys are busy climbing trees, catching frogs, or tossing a baseball with their dad in the backyard, Tom Sullivan was helping his father embalm dead bodies.

So goes the life of the son of a third-generation funeral director.

Today, as a fifty-something father himself, Sullivan shares how he was cautious about letting his own children even attend funerals, wary of the effects it might have had on them - effects that he himself has felt for so many years. But while he regrets being given a front-row-seat look at death so young, he doesn t fault his father. Death was just a matter-of-fact occurrence in the Sullivan household - and the means by which food was put on the dinner table.

Sullivan recalls some of the more gruesome, disturbing, and spectacular deaths he witnessed - 100 mph car accidents, an infamous five-person murder, a skydiver whose parachute failed to deploy - as well as the more mundane, ''garden-variety'' deaths. Though he admits to being deeply scarred by his childhood exposure to death, he maintains a healthy sense of humor. Most importantly, he has developed a deep, unique perspective on the frailty of human life.