His work begins when someone dies. The dead is brought to him and laid on a steel table in a fluorescent-lit, refrigerator-cold room reeking of formalin, where he prepares the lifeless body for burial or cremation.
Here, in this in-between space for the departed, lies part of an answer to one of life’s oldest and most enduring questions: What happens to us when we die?
In this room, a morgue in the basement of a funeral parlor in Quezon City, is where Roy Caupe, 61, embalms the bodies of the dead – somebody’s father, mother, husband, wife, child. In short, somebody’s person.
The job, by most standards, is a messy one, and to strangers, bloody, gross and morbid, if not a creepy, thing to do.
The STAR witnessed firsthand how Roy begins his work of embalming, one evening inside the cold and eerily quiet morgue.
The lifeless body of an 83-year-old woman had just arrived from a private hospital, not too far from the funeral house.
Roy gets ready. With light blue scrubs, a plastic apron, black leather shoes, royal blue gloves and a face mask, plus a smile and a big heart for dead strangers, Roy starts the process.
At exactly 8:27 p.m. – the hour when the veil between worlds is said to begin thinning – Roy unzips the black body bag, removes the body and gently transfers it onto the table.
He carefully positions and straightens protruding limbs, gently arranging the hands and legs so the body lies flat and looks natural.
He removes the clothes but keeps the private parts covered with a white cloth. Then, he begins washing the body with a scrub and antibacterial cleaning solution – gently and with dignity, from the face to the feet.
For the face, he is extra gentle, scrubbing it slowly and wiping off the dirt. He cleans the teeth and makes sure the mouth is closed.
The blood is then drained through a vein – usually the right jugular vein – while the preservative fluid, usually formaldehyde in water, is injected into an artery.
A lifelike appearance
What Roy is doing is essentially replacing the body’s blood with embalming fluid to slow decomposition and restore a lifelike appearance.
The process is scientific, but to the loved ones left behind, embalming provides an illusion that their dearly departed have not collapsed into cold, lifeless cells but are still warm bodies that appear to be sleeping in peace.
After draining, Roy is ready to fix the hair and put on the makeup. His makeup kit – starkly different from those for the living – consists of foundations, concealers, eye shadows and blush-on that are mostly in shades of blue, gray and brown, with the exception of lipsticks, and all products are imported from Europe.
After roughly four hours, Roy is done. He puts on the attire chosen by the family. Another dead body has been prepared and is now ready for public viewing.
Roy is proud of the work he has done. He takes pride in beautifying the dead, much like the fulfillment in other professions – an architect with a new design, a lawyer winning a challenging case, a writer finishing a book, or a theater actress taking a bow on stage.
Among his peers, he is known as the embalmer of embalmers, or the best of the best, because he can restore the dead to look as close as possible to the photographs their loved ones provided, even in cases of accident victims.
Roy has been an embalmer for almost three decades now, and yet even after all this time, he still takes care of the dead with the same fervor, passion and zeal as when he first started in the job in 2008.
To outsiders, a job in a funeral parlor seems lonely, scary and unpleasant, but for Roy, embalming is a passion.
As a child growing up in South Cotabato, Roy didn’t exactly dream of becoming an embalmer. But the death of his mother – and a mistake the embalmer made – stuck with him.
His mother was hospitalized in 1975 and was initially declared recovered, but later died of what he learned was lupus.
In their province, embalming was done at home, not in funeral parlors, so he personally witnessed the process.
He was eight years old at the time, but the image stuck with him.
He saw the embalmer insert tubes and draw blood from her abdomen, which bubbled as if she were still alive. His mother appeared to move, convincing Roy that his mother was not dead. But the embalmer did not bother to call a doctor and check.
This haunting sight developed in Roy a lifelong resolve that if he ever became an embalmer, he would handle the dead gently and humanely.
‘I felt my mother was still alive. She was still moving when she was being embalmed. The blood had bubbles, so I promised myself if I became an embalmer, I would not be like him because he was careless,’ Roy told The STAR.
But first, Roy took on a lot of jobs. He worked abroad as a department store salesman. He then aspired to become a pilot mechanic, so he studied aeronautics upon returning to the Philippines after working in the Middle East from 1986 to 2002. He then became a radio journalist and, for a while, had a short stint as a stuntman.
He then saw an interview with an embalmer on TV, which sparked his curiosity. The embalmer became rich. This inspired Roy. He pursued training in embalming and, in 2008, eventually landed a job at a funeral home.
Beautifying the dead
Roy knew early on that he was going to love the job. He especially liked it when he was able to beautify the dead and ‘fix’ those who were disfigured due to accidents.
But it was not without challenges, especially hearing tales of malpractice committed by his older peers. There was a 13-year-old girl who was declared dead but showed signs of life, yet senior colleagues did not call a doctor.
Doesn’t the work scare him?
Roy said he wasn’t scared at all. Sometimes he even sleeps alone in the morgue, or together with the dead, when he is too tired to go home or while waiting for bodies to come. But he believes that spirits sometimes roam in the funeral homes.
One time, he said, he woke up and saw a huge ball of light inside the morgue. He felt the presence of a spirit, but this did not scare him. To him, it was just part of life – and death.
Roy said the job does not pay as much as he hoped it would. An entry level salary of an embalmer amounts to P18,000 to P20,000 a month but since Roy is among the best in the industry, he is sought after by different funeral homes and is able to earn more.
Ultimately, however, more than the money, the job is very fulfilling, he said.
Roy believes that his work as an embalmer is not merely about preparing the dead for burial with care and respect. It is truly about giving dignity to the deceased and giving their families a chance to say goodbye.
For, as difficult as it is, letting go of the dead is the ultimate, tender act of love.