Good grief: funeral director who demystifies death for Singaporeans, and why her focus is on helping the living
- Ang Jolie Mei helps grieving Singaporeans work through their sorrow by inviting them to help wash, beautify and dress dead relatives for their funerals
- She has modernised the funeral business in other ways, such as by providing special services for children and even fetuses, and written a book about it
Ang Jolie Mei makes plans for us to meet in her office in Singapore on a Tuesday morning. “Come to our facility so you can see the work we do,” she says enthusiastically. She provides directions to a street locals commonly refer to as “Death Alley”.
The night before the meeting, though, the funeral director calls and says apologetically that we’ll have to meet at her home. Her office “has a job in the morning”.
For a woman who faces death on a daily basis, Ang is surprisingly chipper. We meet in her chic walk-up apartment in the city state’s trendy Tiong Bahru district. As we sit by a glass bay window, Ang’s bright-eyed 10-month-old plays nearby in the airy, Scandinavian-inspired living room.
Just a 20-minute drive away is Ang’s funeral parlour, on a street lined with dozens of other similar businesses – hence the sinister nickname.
“There’s a Chinese saying that goes: ‘birth, old age, sickness, then death’,” says Ang. “It implies that everyone goes through these exact four phases, in that order. But I disagree. I’ve taken care of people who are born, who grow old, then die. I’ve taken care of people who are born, who fall ill, then die. And sometimes, unfortunately, I take care of people who are born and then they die. So the only constant is death. Illness and old age? It’s not even guaranteed.”