Giving the dead a final glow is my passion, says funeral home director

Sheila Kiarie at her Kabaiyas Funeral Parlour in Nakuru on August 13, 2024. Sheila oversees a range of funeral services, including the sale of coffins, dressing the deceased, arranging hearse services, operating lowering gear machines, and ensuring a dignified farewell for the departed. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

Applying makeup on a dead person is not much different than on a living person, says Sheila Kiarie, a Nakuru-based funeral director.

Ms Kiarie had always been drawn to death. Before she decided to take it as a job, she would visit Nakuru Level 5 Hospital daily just to see dead bodies.

That sounds morbid, or possibly extremely goth, but her interest wasn’t in the afterlife or aesthetics. She wanted to pursue a profession rooted in service and death care industry was her calling.

It was an inexplicable calling to her that, once she began work, seemed like destiny. “I wanted to familiarise myself with the process of preserving and preparing dead bodies. A job I have taken up without going to school,” she says.

The mother of three holds a bachelor’s degree in business development but decided to work in a funeral home in Nakuru City. The 35-year-old has defied societal norms to venture into the world of the dead.

In her workplace, she is surrounded by the dead more than the living. And she likes it. Kiarie currently runs a funeral service business opposite the Nakuru Level 5 Hospital and spreads her services to other hospitals.

She says most families would want their loved ones to look close to how they were when they were alive. For instance, if the deceased used to do her hair or apply makeup, that is exactly how their loved ones would want them to look like when giving their last respects.

“Most of my clients always want make-up done to their mothers or sisters or their loved ones just like they used to appear when they are alive. Some even want the hair done or a wig put on them so that they can look like they are still alive,” says Kiarie.

She adds that she normally prepares the body before loved ones can view it. “If it’s a lady, with the assistance of other morticians, we normally remove the body from the cold room and place it on a flat surface to cool off the ice for about an hour, same for the male deceased whom we shave their hair and shape their beards,” she says.

She adds: “I use legit products which vary from different companies and even colour sheds to avoid spilling the makeup on the deceased clothes because most of them are white.”

“If you use substandard makeup, the deceased will look a bit different or may even be a different person from the actual photos because remember this is a dead body that has been in the cold room for some days, that is the reason why one must use original makeup products and the correct colour shade,’’ she adds.

Apart from beautification to the body which is done according to the family’s specifications, other procedures include putting final touches on the body by dressing and stuffing it in the coffin before the final presentation popularly known as cosmetology.

She also runs a funeral service business which includes selling caskets, burial flowers and hiring out a hearse complete with a lowering gear machine.

Get used to it

Kiarie says misconceptions about the profession and the dead inspired her to be a mortician. She says it took her six months to get used to seeing dead bodies. 

“It was a bit scary because the first few months I did not want to be left in the dark alone, I would see the dead bodies that I had done for makeup during the day. I would see them come into my dreams at night and that is how I overcame the fear by assisting the mortuary assistants,” she recalls.

“During each visit, the mortuary attendant would take me inside the morgue, filled with bodies placed in the cold rooms, on embalming tables and the floor,” she says.

“I was inspired by the death of my parents at a young age, while growing up going through grief alone hardened my feelings towards the dead. I slowly started embracing death from a young age not knowing I had a passion that the society considered weird especially for young women as it has been dominated by men,” she tells The Standard.

She says her family was at first disappointed in her when they realised she had left her job at an NGO as a business developer to join a funeral service business which would mean she spent most of her time with the dead.

“My family and friends often asked me if it was normal to leave my NGO job to work as a mortician. They were against it as they perceived this as one of the weirdest jobs. To them, it’s not a normal job. My sisters were scared of me, and some of my friends didn’t want to associate with me when they realised I work with the dead,” she says.

However, the more she worked on dead people, the more she got used to the work and came to the reality that it was a job like any other.

Day-to-day duties

She attributes some of the challenges she faces to her day-to-day duties including cultural diversity.

For instance, there are some cultures where once someone dies they refrain from associating themselves with the dead, and in such a situation, she has to do everything for them including helping them choose a coffin.

She says some people would prefer their dead relatives buried with items like a torch, a radio some even machetes and she has to assist them because she appreciates cultural diversity.

Kiarie explains that historically women in the African culture were tasked with washing and preparing the dead for burial rites.

This changed during the World War, when soldiers needed preservation to be sent home to their families, so surgeons began embalming bodies.

In the past, the funeral industry has often been associated with an aging workforce, characterised by an image of elderly men in dark suits dominating the landscape.

However, a significant demographic shift has been taking place within the industry over the last decade.

This transformation can be attributed to what we can call a “missed generation,” where many young men did not follow their family tradition into the funeral profession and instead pursued alternative career paths.

As a result, the industry found it challenging to attract fresh talent to replace its aging workforce, leading to a substantial cohort of aging professionals with a median age exceeding 48.

Today, young women are stepping forward to address this gap and shape the future of the funeral industry.

She urges young women to embrace the funeral industry by being more open to innovative ideas, leading to personalised and creative funeral services that cater to the unique wishes and needs of each family.

She adds that young morticians, especially women should enhance bereavement support with their empathetic nature and provide more support to mourning families, both during and after the funeral.