Mortician makes living from the dead

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

It's one thing to be a make-up artist for brides and celebrities -- but it's something completely different to be the make-up artist who specializes on the dead.

Many would find such a calling to be equally chilling and depressing at the same time. To mortician Windy Gozali, however, the profession is far from morbid.

"It's a job, a profession -- and, just like any other job, you have to be professional," said the 46-year-old woman with an easy laugh.

Being a mortician was furthest thought from Windy's mind when she first started up five years ago. But her desire to help those in need drove her to become what she is today -- the only professional mortician in all of Indonesia.

Her story began when her mother died in 1997. "My mother was a perfectionist, in life she always wanted to look her best, and I knew that she would like to be so in death," Windy said.

That was what prompted her to take up her make-up tools, and learn how to dress a body.

Her first professional opportunity came from businessman Samadikun to dress his deceased mother-in-law.

"At first I was frightened, I used to have nightmares. Now, I am used to it, and find I can sleep well at night," Windy said, noting generous support from Rev. Pengki Andu.

Since her first make-up job, she established the Firdaus Decoration Co. to provide decorations for the funeral home.

Windy's tools of the trade are no different from those of any other professional makeup artist. She uses her own special concoction of make-up to give a life-like tone to otherwise lifeless skin.

"When people die of a heart attack, their faces acquire a blue hue -- while those with a liver condition acquire a more yellowish hue," she said.

In the end, she can cover and tone the skin color to look as it was in life.

Windy's special foundation was created after a consultation with apothecaries and chemists about the effects of various chemicals on the human skin.

This research and the resulting products do not come cheap. "If I charge customers what I spend on production, a make-up job could cost as much as Rp 70 million (about US$6,698) to Rp 80 million," she said, adding that most of the time she works on a charity basis.

To create a life-like look, Windy also gets help from the Atma Jaya Funeral Home -- where she usually practices -- with a special formalin embalming technique invented by the home's resident forensics expert.

"Dr Jaya's formalin technique doesn't leave the skin hard as stone, so it's easier to put on makeup. The end result will make the deceased look as if they are really sleeping," Windy said, referring to the forensic expert at Atma Jaya.

However, Windy's job description doesn't end with dressing the face. "We must dress the whole body in case sores and wounds let out unpleasant smells afterwards," she said.

This adds four to five hours to Windy's job; it also requires that she and her helpers occasionally "hug" the body to get at the hard-to-reach parts.

"I have to do it -- otherwise, the job would take far too long," she said.

So how much does this special service cost? Between Rp 750,000 and Rp 3 million for the makeup, depending on the level of difficulty.

"If the person died of natural causes, it is easy to make-up, but cost for murder and accident victims are higher because often I have to reconstruct the body," Wendy said.

Most of the physical reconstruction jobs are done by the Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, perfunctorily.

She recalled one case of a person who lost their face in a train accident that separated bones and flesh from the body.

"I had to sew up a severed arm and, afterwards, found out that it was shorter than the other.

"Apparently, most of the flesh had gone missing," Windy said; she spent more than seven hours dressing the body.

After finishing, she promised herself that she would never eat another bowl of oxtail soup, as it was "too similar in appearance" to the accident victim's flesh and bones.

It is too gruesome a job for most people to handle, and that is why no other professional morticians have emerged, despite the very lucrative nature of the business.

"So far, I have no competitors -- but it would be nice if there were, because I can't do all the jobs myself," Windy said.