Pasu Ng

Mortician, Life and Death Educator

"When adversity strikes, you'll have a lot of negative emotions - you'll want to give up, escape, get away from it all. But when we sit with our negative emotions, without forcing ourselves to have positive thoughts, we become stronger."

I have loved painting since I was a child and always got excellent grades in art. In college, I majored in art. After graduating, I worked in the design field for a while. Later, a relative introduced me to working in a funeral home and I became a mortician. Since I already had a foundation in art, I picked up the work very quickly.

Working with the remains of those who died from sickness or accidents every day really impressed on me the fragility of life. After working as a mortician for a few years, a good friend of mine chose to end his life. He was only in his twenties and I was the one responsible for preparing his body. Seeing my friend lying there in front of me, the only thing I could do for him was to help restore his body to the way he was before his death so that his loved ones could see him for the last time. It wasn't until after completing this heartbreaking task that I was able to process my grief with my friends.

In my mind, my friend was reliable, optimistic, and friendly. I never imagined that he would take his own life. Back then, we didn't know much about mental illness. I knew that he was unhappy at the time, and I had thought about calling him one day, but I figured he would be fine after some time on his own. I didn't call him that day, not expecting to receive the news of his suicide the very next day.

Because I didn't make the call, I blamed myself for his suicide. If I had called him, would things have been different? Since there is no way to bring back the dead, I started to enroll in courses on life and death education and grief counselling offered by different organisations to help me make sense of all my questions. I found that most of the people who took these courses were social workers, medical professionals, or perhaps elderly folks who had just lost a loved one. I found myself wanting to popularise the topic of life and death so that more people could learn about life through understanding death.

Over 10 years ago, I started to promote life and death education to encourage the public to have more open conversations about death, to not to be afraid of the taboo of death. By studying death, we can gain a better understanding of the meaning of life and how to live a meaningful life. From time to time, I also support families who have lost loved ones due to unnatural causes. Recently, I once again stepped out of my comfort zone and founded a social enterprise “RIP88” to provide funeral services and grief counselling to grassroots families in Hong Kong.