If you could fast-forward your life to your deathbed and listen to your regrets (and joys), and then rewind your life and live it with that knowledge about living a life with no excuses, no misgivings, no looking back-would you do it?

This book provides that knowledge.

After fourteen years in the funeral business, Chris Meyer has listened to grieving families, their regrets and wishes, sadness and pain, for the dearly departed-expressing their "if onlys" and "what ifs." From these painful graveside encounters, he learned lessons that kept repeating themselves.

These are the (first) 20 life lessons: some simple, some profound, some irreverent-lessons about life, from death.

This is not a story about dying. This is a story of living. This is...life in 20 lessons.

Poignant. Funny. Filled with love.

As a man over fifty years of age, statistically, I have lived more than half of my life.

For the last fourteen years of that life, I have owned a funeral home. It has taught me the most about the human condition and myself. I have seen horrific, absolutely horrific, things, smelled smells that are unimaginable, cried with friends and strangers, and witnessed unspeakable tragedy, heartache, and death all too often for one human being.

But the funeral home has also given me my greatest gift-perspective. If you think your day is going badly, someone always has it worse, way worse, guaranteed.

You've heard it all before: Each day above ground is a blessing, live each day as if it were your last, or any one of the manifold great quotes about being alive.

They are all true.

And now, in some way, I can see there may have been a purpose to all this. Like maybe I was meant to be a conduit, of sorts, between the surviving and the dead.

I have sat with the survivors. I have listened to their stories, their cries, their confessions, their regrets, their wishes, their "would'ves," "should'ves," and "could'ves." I have just closed my mouth and listened.

In listening to the survivors, I have heard the dead. Not in any creepy M. Night Shyamalan "I see dead people" type of way, but in being around so much death, listening to families and loved ones' stories, eulogies, services, pastors, preachers, passages, and musical selections, I have gained some insights over the years, some expertise.

And, for me, the bonus was that I raised a family just as I started in the funeral industry. Our lives together became the test case for the lessons I was learning about life, from death. After seeing the impact on my own family, I knew I could help a lot of people with this information.

So I sat down and memorialized the lessons I learned to make certain you don't search your whole life only to realize the true meaning of life on your deathbed.

But make no mistake, this is not a funeral book. This is a story of living-with "insider's knowledge." Sure, I will tell you funeral stories from where I drew inspiration. That is my platform, the reason you should listen to me, why I am an "expert in the field"-at least that is what the publishers and editors have told me. (Why would anyone give two rips about some Everyman's opinion of life?)

Fair enough.

But, honestly, there is as much inspiration from my current and past lives herein. Because I am not only a funeral guy, but also a father, a husband, a son, a grandson, a brother, a coach, and a friend.

In the end, this is not a funeral story. This is story about how one man discovered life in the funeral business...by living death.

1 Be Thankful

2 Make a Difference

3 Avoid Judgment

4 Respect Others and Yourself

5 Be Vulnerable

6 Get Uncomfortable

7 Failure Is the Foundation

8 Love Simply

9 Become a Famillionaire