Mortician: a profitable but stressful profession

Mortician: a profitable but stressful profession

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Mahanani does not have to worry about her clients blinking
when she puts on their eye shadow. After all, their souls have
already departed their now cold bodies.

Still, she will chatter and apply face powder and lipstick
softly and carefully -- a sign of respect for the dead, said
Nani, as she is called.

Nani is one of the not-so-many people whose task it is to make
the deceased look as fresh and beautiful as they were when they
were alive -- a job that would leave most people quivering.

"It started with the father of a friend dying, and I had to
take care of everything," she said recently.

"I couldn't sleep properly for a month afterwards, I kept
seeing his face. But afterwards, when more people asked me to do
make-up on corpses, I took it as my calling."

Most morgues and mortuaries will clean the body, embalm it and
do make-up as part of their package. But don't imagine that it's
anything like the Fishers' complete service in HBO's hit series
Six Feet Under. Most morticians do not use make-up specially
designed for corpses, and none has certificates to prove their
qualifications.

Dea, a 27-year-old account executive, had the women from her
church come over and dress her mother when she passed away five
years ago.

"They did her make-up too; nothing much, just a thin layer of
powder and lipstick," she said.

"We fixed her make-up from time to time ourselves. I didn't
like touching her face, though. It was so cold," she added.

Nani, whose clients include relatives of former president
Soeharto, imports the special powder she uses to smooth the skin
of the deceased from Germany, at a pricey Rp 2 million (US$200)
for a small bottle. Unlike regular powder that needs to be
freshened every two hours or so, especially in the sweltering
heat of Jakarta, mortician's powder will look better with each
passing day.

For the make-up service, a professional mortician can get
between Rp 500,000 and Rp 2 million, depending on the client's
condition. Bodies that need special reconstruction efforts, such
as burns patients or accident victims, require higher prices.

Despite the relatively large sums -- Rp 500,000 will be enough
to get a make-up session, have the hair set in a French bun
elegantly, and a pedicure and manicure -- not many people are
taking up the profession.

"Would you do it?" Nani said with a small laugh. "It's a very
stressful job. You are in touch with other people's sadness
constantly."

"You also get called day or night," said the mother-of-four,
who had just got called at 2 a.m. the night before the interview.

For morticians who take the next step and become funeral event
organizers, the rewards are even bigger. Several morticians have
started such a business, arranging everything from flower
arrangements, decorations, memorial services, to renting chairs.

A complete package for upper-class customers, excluding the
catering services and coffin, goes for Rp 30 million and can even
exceed Rp 100 million.

The job is not as easy as it sounds, though. When Nani
received a phone call an hour after former finance minister
Radius Prawiro died on his hospital bed in Germany, she packed
her bags, rounded up her crew, went to his house, and stayed
there for four days straight.

"They wanted white roses everywhere. I used some 700 bunches
of roses, each with 20 stems, and had to search for them through
all the flower suppliers in Jakarta," said Nani.

Perhaps for many people, a funeral is the last chance to do
something for the deceased -- to show respect, fix mistakes, make
perfect previous imperfection. Therein lays the market
opportunity for funeral supporting businesses.