NOT for the faint-hearted

MAKING a corpse look alive and beautiful sounds like a creepy joke but in truth, there is such a profession, and people in this atypical line of work are known as funeral make-up artists or mortuary beauticians. And it’s dead serious!

Their job is to ‘re-fashion’ the dead to look as close as possible to real life — or just as how their families would want them to be remembered.

Family and friends naturally want to keep as many good memories as possible of a loved one who has passed on. And it’s the funeral make-up artist’s job to help keep these memories alive by making the deceased look as radiant in death as in life, putting vibrant colours back on the cheeks and erasing the pale tint on the lips of the mort.

The work is more or less similar to a salon beautician’s but for a different purpose. The morgue beautician starts by preparing the dead body — cleaning or dressing it first before applying cosmetics on the hair, face, limbs and nails. In short, the corpse will be made over to look as pleasantly natural as possible for the wake and burial.

Very often, families will provide the funeral make-up artist with a photo (as a guide) but every situation is different. The cause of death such as illness or trauma, the difficulty of the style requested, the quality of the photo as well as the chemicals used to prepare the body can make the job easier or harder.

But for Chai Siang Hui, it doesn’t matter either way.

“I just want to provide comfort and solace by making the deceased look as close as possible to the way the grieving families and friends wish them to be remembered,” said the 34-year-old funeral make-up artist with Kuching Memorial Services Berhad.

Chai, who has been dressing up corpses for 16 years, said badly damaged bodies of accident victims may need the help of hospitals for stitching and reconstructive work to restore their physical structures before any make-up could proceed.

He said some people who died of cancer may no longer have hair, so he would have to put wigs on them, adding that for dead females, besides hairstyling, some families may also ask for eyelashes to perk up the face, while others may want the beard of dead males shaved.

In many cases, the standard flesh-tone make-up is all that is needed, and usually requested by families who lost elderly members whereas families of women who died young would sometimes ask for heavier make-up to be applied.

“For example, there was this husband whose wife died in her 30’s. He requested thicker make-up for her because when she was alive, she loved wearing cosmetics whenever she went out and wherever she went,” Chai added.

Same make-up

He pointed out that some families could be quite particular, insisting that the types of make-up, including for doing nails, should be same as those used by the deceased when they were alive.

The fact that the make-up is carried out and styled in a horizontal rather than vertical position can also pose a challenge. But there are customs and traditions to follow and as corpses are laid in a sleeping position (horizontal and face up), the funeral make-up artist has to work from that position.

Chai does the make-up mostly at the homes of the deceased but is sometimes asked to do so at the mortuary.

“We do get calls from families at the hospital. My assistants and I would then go to the mortuary to clean and dress the bodies. There are times we may even have to help secure the release of the bodies to be taken home,” he said.

According to Chai, the dead bodies are placed in a chiller (to minimise movement) for the make-up. The fridge-like condition also helps preserve the ‘beautified’ appearance throughout the funeral period.

He said most of the time, the families were present during the make-up and styling session, and they would talk to their dearly departed about what was being done for them and that they were in good hands.

Chai is rarely alone with the corpses but when he is, he introduces himself to his ‘clients’ so as not to feel like a stranger, intruding into their privacy.

“I don’t want to show any disrespect to the dead,” he stressed.

No nightmares

He confessed to feeling scared at first when dressing a corpse by himself but not anymore.

“Now, I feel normal. After I’m done, I go home and never think about my work anymore. And no, I never have nightmares. To me, it’s just a job and I want to provide the best to both the living and the dead.”

He said he derived a lot of satisfaction from the positive responses and comments he got from families of the deceased.

He believed it must have been fate that led him to his unwonted vocation. To him, the work of a mortuary beautician is an art but one not many people can appreciate.

“To make a corpse look like a living person isn’t what people would consider a pleasant thing to do. It’s, in fact, quite unnerving if you are not used to it — certainly not for the faint-hearted,” he said, adding that he felt lucky his family never objected to his career choice.

On average, he handles about 15 bodies a month, each requiring some 20 minutes to half an hour’s attention. The make-up can stay throughout the funeral period — normally three days or so where no touch-ups are needed.

In his 16 years as a morgue beautician, there is one thing he can never forget — performing cosmetic service on a person he knew — his team leader and boss, who died in 2014.

With a sad look, he said, “Because of our bonding since I got to know him the first day on the job, the feeling of preparing his body for the funeral was different. It was very emotional — I felt very sad … we all did. He was my boss.”

Meanwhile, Kuching Memorial Services executive director Siaw Chow Jin revealed that mortuary beautician as a career seemed to be attracting younger people today.

“It’s a profession that’s becoming attractive to people passionate about caregiving. Parents have no problems letting their young take up this career,” he noted.

This could partly be due to the modern generation being not as superstitious as the older generation.

Chai said older people may believe in many kinds of death-related taboos and bad omens but the younger generation, with more open and scientific minds, were more likely to see dying and corpses as integral to the cycle of life and not something to fear.

He noted that even the modern funeral ambience was more vibrant and not as gloomy as in the past.

His team of make-up artists are aged between 20 and 40.

According to him, the make-up is usually done before the funeral rituals. But for Buddhists, no one is supposed to touch the corpse, including family members. The morgue beauticians have to wait eight hours after death before they can start applying the cosmetics.

Chai said this is because Buddhists believe a dead person’s spirit would linger for some time and could be affected by what happened to the corpse, adding, “It’s important the body is treated gently and with respect and the priest can help the spirit continue its journey calmly to a higher state.”

Most of Chai’s clients are Chinese although there are Bumiputeras and foreigners as well. The majority are Buddhists and Christians.

Families and friends all wish to see their dearly departed one last time, and it’s an honourable thing that the morgue beauticians are able to make the image of the deceased as beautiful and as peaceful as possible.

As the saying goes, “It takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them and a day to love them but it takes an entire lifetime to forget them.”