 On Christmas Eve, 2000, funeral-director Nathaniel Samuel Fisher is involved in a hearse-accident with a bus and is killed instantly. Ruth Fisher has a hard time coping, so can t bring herself to identify her husband s body at the morgue. David, the secretly gay younger son who remained at home to help with the family business, feels nothing but dismay at the prospect of now continuing his hated job for good, and focuses on keeping everything in order for the newest funeral. Claire Fisher gets the news just after smoking crystal at a party, and is forced to hide it. Nate Fisher returns home just in time to learn of the death, and is forced to keep Claire s secret, console Ruth when she confesses she d been cheating on Nathaniel, and take abuse from David for not helping him or forcing the others to swallow their grief, and insisting that David unleash his own. Then, before before Nathaniel Fisher is cold in his grave, David gets an invitation from funeral-home chain Kroehner Services to join.