Preserving the dead: Inside the life of an embalmer

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.

- IRIS GONZALES

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