“To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?”
-Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1

About 20 people gathered to celebrate Carolyn Too. They were her friends and her colleagues, and they came to speak lovingly of her: how gregarious she was, and how generous with her time. They recalled her smile, her easygoing nature. Stories about the first time they met her poured out, as did little anecdotes about how much Carolyn meant to them. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Sentences were punctuated with sniffles. Even Carolyn wasn’t spared the torrent of emotions as she dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

Dear friend of Carolyn, You
are cordially invited to join us for
a special occasion as we gather
to honour Carolyn while she is still
with us. This event “Celebration
of Life” is an opportunity for us
to celebrate Carolyn’s life, share
cherished memories, and express
our love and gratitude.

When it comes to the conversations in an end-of-life scenario, people tend to become more mindful—aware even—as they tiptoe around the past tenses. The overcompensation of putting everything in the now—Carolyn is here. Carolyn says this. Carolyn has cancer. As though there’s still the semblance of control of the situation; that through the powers of words, you can steer the circumstances to a favourable reality.

About 30 minutes before the living funeral, the mood was considerably lighter. Cheeky, in fact, as Carolyn nodded towards the opposite corner of the bed, gesturing me to sit. “Don’t worry, I’m very chill one.” We are in her bedroom, where the make-up artist is finishing up applying eye shadow on Carolyn.

Dressed in black, Carolyn leans to her left, angling herself just enough that it’s comfortable to face me. Her smile comes as easily as she engages you, as you immediately feel that you’re meeting up with a long-lost friend. Carolyn feels overwhelmed. She didn’t expect the swell of media attention over her living wake; her three-bedroom flat feels more intimate with two film crews crowding her living room. It’s an unrehearsed choreography of camera shots and blocking; the irony of capturing the naturalness of the scene while still being an intrusive presence.

“The idea of a living funeral is new,” Carolyn says. “There was one previous case in Singapore that I saw and I was inspired by it. We, [the] Chinese, don’t do this sort of thing. But when I brought up this topic to my close friend, she said, what’s the difference? You always have parties at home anyway. This is just like that but bigger.”

It almost sounds flippant the way Carolyn says it but she has always been affable. She prefers it if people shed the enforced social civility and just relax and have fun. She once saw the idea of a living funeral as taboo but now she is warmed up to it.

It feels rude to mention that Carolyn looks tired but she has issues with sleeping. Carolyn points it to her cancer. She feels it—her tumour, this dread guest—in her stomach. She has an ascitic tap, where she drains the fluid that’s produced by the tumour to reduce the discomfort. “I have to do this every morning and it’s quite tiring,” she says. “Plus, I’m diabetic so I also have to do my insulin shots, I need my meds. I have to eat so that I can sustain my sugar throughout the day.”

There are days when it might get too much for her; all she wants is to do nothing. But as she lies in bed, reason takes the wheel and her mind formulates a compromise: if it’s too much in the morning, do it later.

“It is human nature to try to survive,” she explains. “It’s not like I don’t wanna go to work so I take leave. If I don’t do it, I will die.”

“Life is just a candle, and a dream
must give it flame.”
‘The Fountain of Lamneth’, Rush

This is the length and breadth of Carolyn’s life.

Carolyn Too is the eldest of three children. Her family owned and operated a confectionary business. Early memories of bringing her classmates and stealing bites from unattended confections floated about Carolyn’s consciousness. She was bubbly as a kid. However as she transitioned to her time at CHIJ St Theresa, her recollection fell slack.

She didn’t take to the education system and left school after her O’levels. While pursuing her mass communication diploma at MDIS, Carolyn also worked part-time at a balloon company and as a KTV DJ.

The next phase of her life was a long-standing tenure at Pearson Education. For 13 years, Carolyn had a sales team and sold textbooks to private universities. She switched to Marshall Cavendish, where she travelled extensively, and then to LexisNexis. She stayed for two to three years before quitting due to the environment being hectic.

By then in her 40s, her kidneys started to fail. It was probably due to being a type one diabetic since her 20s. Still, she took the news in stride. She was offered two kinds of dialysis treatments. One was hemodialysis, which involved cleaning her blood at a dialysis centre three times a week. The other option was peritoneal dialysis, where waste is collected from the blood by washing the empty space in the abdomen (peritoneal cavity). This is a daily affair but it can be done at home. Carolyn picked the second.

She still had to go for surgery to insert a peritoneal catheter via a laparoscopic surgery. After the first treatment, they found that the water output was less than what was put into her body. An x-ray confirmed that the catheter was slanted so another operation had to be done to straighten it.

But when her urologist operated on her, they spotted a large tumour in her ovaries. Carolyn was alone when they broke the news to her. She cried as the nurse comforted her. They drew blood from her and eventually inserted a permanent catheter in a vein near her neck for hemodialysis. Test results confirmed she had ovarian cancer in the second and third stages.

She broke the news to her family, they were supportive. While thoughts about how long she has left clouded her mind, her innate positivity broke through like a high noon sun: “let’s get through chemo. I can tahan the process,” she had said.

The clinical team suggested transferring her to the oncology department at the National University Hospital (NUH). They would have a better understanding of her situation. At NUH, they found a 28cm-long tumour sitting in her pelvic area. They placed her on chemo treatment, but each session left her weak due to renal failure complications, and she had to be hospitalised after each chemo session.

Her hair thinned out from the chemo; her head became spotted with ulcers. Vomiting was a common affair; her appetite waned. There was dramatic weight loss. Sam Yew, Carolyn’s close friend, aided her when she was in hospital. She put him down as “godbrother” as it was easier for him to visit during COVID restrictions; the appellation stuck and that’s how she has been referring to him since. When she was warded, Carolyn could tell if the other patient in the room was about to die. That’s when the two visitors-per-bed rule is relaxed and the patient’s bed is surrounded by relatives and friends.

Sometimes, she can hear children crying—plaintive pleas telling an elderly parent that “they can go now”. Carolyn tries to block it all out by cranking up the volume in her earphones. She knows dying is what waits for all of us at the end. But even with that knowledge, there’s still the fear and uncertainty of how she would go. Will there be pain or suffering? She prayed; eyes squeezed tight as her fingers interlocked so keenly that her knuckles became bone-white. In her prayer, she made a simple request: “When it happens, just take me in my sleep.”

After her chemo treatment gave her the all-clear, she was in remission for about two months before the cancer returned.

“And as it is appointed unto men once to die,
but after this the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27

In a study conducted by the Lien Foundation on Singaporeans’ perception of death, only half of the 1,006 people surveyed have talked about death or dying with their loved ones. One of the biggest triggers for opening up conversations about death and dying is when one is faced with a life-threatening illness or when someone they know passes away.

About 36 per cent of the respondents stated that they were comfortable talking about their own death but when it comes to talking to someone who is terminally ill, that number dropped to 20 per cent. The big reason for this is that the respondents have no idea how to broach the subject.

But that survey was in 2014. Since then, conversations around death and dying have opened up, albeit slowly. Prompted in part by the COVID-19 pandemic and through initiatives like the 2023 National Strategy for Palliative Care and online portals like My Legacy, the public is becoming increasingly receptive to the idea of funerals being an occasion to celebrate life instead of death.

The Life Celebrant is one such funeral service that focuses on the deceased’s life during the wake. Founded by Angjolie Mei, a second-generation funeral director, the idea to commemorate rather than mourn, started when she had to organise her own father’s funeral. She’d always known her father as a stoic man but she discovered another side of him through stories told by his friend who came to the funeral.

To further demystify death and dying, Angjolie wrote her autobiography called, Dying to Meet You: Confessions of a Funeral Director. She went on to launch a podcast of the same name in 2021, where she and a guest talk candidly about the topic of death and life.

HCA Hospice, Singapore’s largest home hospice care provider, was behind the first widely-documented living funeral late last year. Michelle “Mike” Ng was an HCA patient who took quickly to the concept of a living funeral when it was first suggested to her by HCA’s principal medical social worker, Jayne Leong.

“Living funerals form a part of the legacy-related work that medical social workers typically facilitate with patients and their families,” Leong explains. “But it is not recommended to all families as every family is unique and may have different ways they wish to honour and celebrate their lives and legacies.”

Mike’s living funeral was documented by Our Grandfather Story (OGS), a digital publisher. Uploaded to YouTube, the video was OGS’ most-watched content with 3.3 million views to date. Viewers’ comments were largely positive and sympathetic; many saw the concept of a living funeral as ideal. One of them was Carolyn.

Like Mike, the idea of a living funeral was suggested to Carolyn by her own medical social worker, Shannon Sim. This time, Carolyn is open to more coverage of her living funeral. Aside from Esquire Singapore, The Straits Times and Channel 8 were the other two media covering the occasion. With this level of media intrusion, does the Observer Effect come into play at Carolyn’s living funeral? Would the mood be different, or, perhaps more relaxed, without the presence of journalists and cameras?

“The intimate connection between patient and invited loved ones and significant others to these special events are organic experiences that will happen regardless of whether there is media coverage of the events or not,” Jayne Leong says. “For Mike’s living funeral, she expressed her wish for more people to know about holding a living funeral, hospice care and talking about death and dying openly, thus we invited the media to cover her story.”

Steps were taken to ensure prior consent from the patient and their guests. Should anyone feel uncomfortable about being photographed and filmed, their request for privacy is respected.

Shannon led the organisation of the event. They invited friends and roped in volunteers to help with Carolyn’s make-up, setting up the decorations and documenting the affair. Catering and other expenses were covered by HCA.

It was a lovely experience, which is an uncommon thing to say at a living funeral. Throughout the four hours, Carolyn’s friends said their peace. Reminiscences of the past were traded; laughter punctuated the sombre air. Carolyn belted out a few tunes with her karaoke buddies and gifted personalised cards with handwritten notes about how much each of them meant to her. It had the timbre of a farewell party for someone making that big move overseas.

The doctors gave her a prognosis of no more than six months to live. That was about a year ago. Against all odds and assumptions, Carolyn abides. She even managed to tick another item off her bucket list: spending the day at Disneyland in Hong Kong. As ever, ‘godbrother’ Sam was there by her side to watch over her.

Still a presence on social media, Carolyn continues to dole out information on her progress and help allay fears about death and dying. She walks her dog. She even plans to travel alone to Taiwan—much to Sam’s chagrin.

For Carolyn, she believes that there is more to this after she passes. A heaven, where there’s no pain, no sadness. “There is a fear though,” Carolyn adds, “not about the end but how I am going to go. The suffering is what I’m afraid of. The fear is always there but I put it aside and live in the moment.” We all ride on hope, living one day at a time. But some like Carolyn, will hold on tighter than ever; their fierce focus is on the present as their candle burns at both ends.

(Editor's note: Hours after this article was uploaded, Carolyn's medical social worker, Shannon Sim, said that Carolyn is not continuing with her dialysis and is now on terminal discharge.)

(Update: Shortly upon returning home, Carolyn passed on peacefully surrounded by her family and care team.)