Death Becomes Her

How does it feel to be surrounded by death every day? CLEO speaks to three women who are in the business of caring for the deceased or dying, to find out why they chose this seemingly grim calling.

- Sophie Hong

Wong Xiao Hui, 23,

Pallbearer

Unlike her peers, Xiao Hui knew she wanted to join the funeral business since she was a teenager. It might seem morbid that a 14-year-old would even think about this, considering it’s still a taboo topic for a lot of people, but Xiao Hui knew it would be a meaningful job after watching a Japanese drama called The Embalmer.

“I knew then that it was my calling,” she says. A decade later, she applied for an internship at Direct Funeral Services.

“I didn’t do anything about it earlier because I thought that my age was going to be an issue, and I didn’t have any relevant experience,” admits the undergraduate, who’s a final-year economics student at NUS. “But then last year, there was a lot of news about young women in the funeral business – Nicole the embalmer from Serenity Casket, Kelly the undertaker from Hiap Hin Undertaker, and Glorianne, an intern at Direct Funeral Services. That gave me the push to apply for the internship earlier this year.”

Having just started, Xiao Hui is currently a pallbearer under Direct Funeral Services’ internship programme. During this time, she’ll be learning the ropes of the trade – from setting up the venue to conducting religious rites. She hopes to progress to embalming after completing her internship.

Her family isn’t squeamish when it comes to industries that deal with death – in fact, two of her siblings are nurses, and her mum, who volunteers regularly at a hospital, had also harboured dreams of becoming an embalmer. So it’s no suprise that her family is supportive of her career choice.