The Last Act of Visibility

'The people who love us remember exactly who we were.'

Photo by Peter Wallis of Victoria accepting the AofA Award.

Victoria Keen is one half of the amazing international online festival Lifting The Lid which jointly won Advantages of Age’s Grooviest End of Life Organisation, she’s also a funeral director at NSW Funerals. Here she tells the fascinating stories of how she has fulfilled clients’ wishes around clothing or hair colour for their loved one. Either that or the request of the person who died.

I once dressed a man in a white Elvis jumpsuit.

I sprayed his hair black and shaped it into the signature quiff he wore when performing as Elvis — exactly as he would have chosen.

And so - we honoured him exactly as he wanted to be seen — bold, unmistakable, fully himself.

In my work, these requests rarely arrive as declarations. They come gently, often with hesitation.

“Could they wear their woolly jumper? They always felt the cold.”

Sometimes the clothes arrive folded carefully in a bag. Sometimes they are handed over with an apology — that they’re a bit worn. The fabric soft from years of wear, cuffs slightly frayed.

But those are the things we reach for first.

Because these aren’t just clothes. They are every day ritual. Memory. A way of being.

We take care of the small, specific things that matter — the threadbare clothes that have been loved for years, or, in some cases, fulfilling a final request that reflects who they truly were.

One gentleman’s hair had turned white during his illness, as he had stopped colouring it. But his final wish was to have it coloured black again for the service, so people would recognise him as they had always known him — the man he had been all his life.

He was to have an open casket. People would see him.

He had been a presence at his church for decades. That was how people knew him. That was who he needed to be.

Honouring this request was a way to preserve his identity, even in death.

These choices honour the person as they understood themselves, long before anyone else sees them.

We do it because it matters — not for anyone else, but for them and the people who love them.

There is something profoundly human in these requests.

We are often told, subtly or otherwise, that certain things shouldn’t matter as we get older. That appearance is vanity. That we should become less visible. Age, it seems, is supposed to come with a gradual dimming. A softening of edges. An acceptance of invisibility.

And yet, at the end of life, the opposite reveals itself.

The people who love us remember exactly who we were. Not in broad strokes, but in details. The clothes we reached for. The way we wore our hair. The small things we would have adjusted before leaving the house.

They don’t ask for perfection.

They ask for recognition.

I think often of my friend Jessi.

Photo of Jessi by Matthew Hoare

I met Jessi through a community project in South East London. They were impossible to miss — and would have been deeply offended if you tried.

You might see them cycling up the hills of Crystal Palace in four-inch heels, long grey hair streaming behind them. Or walking through South London in a tiny bikini, wearing a pair of papier-mâché breasts they had made themselves, paired with impeccable heels.

Jessi didn’t just exist in the world. They insisted on being seen.

In fact, one of the things that frustrated them most was the instinct to look away.

“Why is nobody looking at me?” they would ask.

For Jessi, this wasn’t about performance. It was about feeling like themselves.

They told me they identified as a man, but chose to dress as what they described as “the most sexy woman” because it made them feel good.

Jessi could be challenging. But if you met them honestly, they respected that.

At their funeral, the details mattered just as much as they had in life.

Music which they had composed was played. A recording of Jessi speaking — explaining, in their own words, why they dressed the way they did — filled the room.

When the time came, I dressed Jessi myself. I put flowers in their hair. And I made a decision with their closest friend — we would not close Jessi’s mouth. Jessi would absolutely have come back to haunt us if we had.

They were still unmistakably Jessi.

That, I think, is what all of this comes down to.