10531414 Podcast

The speaker discusses the importance of the final image of a deceased person for their bereaved family. They share a personal experience working for a funeral company during the COVID pandemic. They mention two different cases: one where the deceased looked cold and pale, causing the family to cry, and another where the deceased was dressed in their favorite outfit, resulting in a peaceful funeral. The speaker highlights the significance of the last image and suggests checking out their essay for more information. 來沾養樂觀的念 回憶裡蔓延 歡送會 有我的少年 Heya, welcome to this podcast. The Cantonese song I've just sung is called Final Party. It's a song about funeral from a deceased perspective. It basically means looking at my smiley face at my funeral, the final image of mine. Remember me this way. I'd kick off this podcast with this song because I want to talk about the importance of the final image of the dead for a bereaved family. I was working for a funeral company in Hong Kong two years ago during the COVID pandemic where I witnessed two bereaved families had a drastically different experience after seeing the deceased's last image. The first customer has died because of COVID, thus the corpse is prohibited from being cosmeticised. His face looked cold and pale. When the bereaved family saw his last image, they cried so hard. And my manager told me to keep calm because it's common for the bereaved family to feel like this is not a good death. On the contrary, our second customer passed away peacefully after he turned 90. His daughter organised an unconventional funeral for him. Instead of dressing the corpse in Chinese traditional shroud, we were told to dress him in his favourite outfit with a Hawaiian shirt and hat. The corpse's last image is at good rest and the bereaved family seemed to be very content with the result and had a very peaceful afternoon funeral. These vastly different experiences did strike me back then. Lucky enough, I finally understand more of the reasons behind the cultural phenomenon after doing this course. If you want to learn more about the importance of the last image, check out my essay.