Dignity in death: Casket company helps seniors plan and carry out their final wishes

Since 2011, Simplicity Casket has worked on over 90 pre-planned funeral arrangements, with 40 of them being pro bono.  ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO

Clay Lim

UPDATED May 28, 2025, 05:00 PM

Thanks for sharing!

SINGAPORE – When Madam Yong died in 2024 at the age of 88, her funeral was executed smoothly despite not having any next of kin. 

She was a pure Buddhist and wanted a same-day cremation. The next day, her ashes and her spirit tablet were placed in a cremation niche at Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery. 

A Buddhist monk chanted and prayed at the monastery on the first and twenty-first day after her death. Amounting to S$450, the monk service and her spirit tablet were fully paid off by Mr Jeffrey Lee, sales and marketing manager at funeral company Simplicity Casket, which had kickstarted her funeral plans 13 years ago.

Since starting these services in 2011, the company has worked on over 90 pre-planned funeral arrangements, with 40 of them being pro bono. 

For their efforts, Simplicity Casket was honoured alongside 12 other recipients at the annual Friends of Community Care Awards on May 28.

The company was awarded under the corporate category for small and medium enterprises alongside two other awardees CK Holdings (2003) and Goshen Consultancy Services.

Launched in 2020 by the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC), the awards honour organisations that contribute to community care in Singapore. 

In 2009, Simplicity Casket had reached out to Madam Yong’s Active Ageing Centre in Kreta Ayer to introduce its pre-planning funeral arrangement service. 

Simplicity Casket sales and marketing manager Jeffrey Lee at Singapore Casket on May 22. ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO

Interested, Madam Yong set up a session with Mr Lee. She told him that she had previously bought a cremation niche and wanted to park some funds for the cremation process as she had no next of kin. 

Mr Lee worked with her to finalise other details, such as the clothes she wanted to wear for her cremation – a black robe. 

In another instance, Madam Fong, 82, from Man Fut Tong Nursing Home in Woodlands had her social worker reach out to Simplicity Casket when she learnt about its service in 2013.

Mr Lee visited her in person and even took her funeral photograph portrait on the day of meeting her.

As she was Catholic, she wanted her ashes to be placed at a Catholic church. To fulfil her wishes, she would need to present her baptism certificate – which she had misplaced. Her son, her only next of kin, had no information about the church that Madam Fong was baptised at.

Given only the approximate location of her church in Katong, Mr Lee painstakingly called up churches in the area in order to find her place of baptism .

Eventually, he managed to identify the church as Church of our Lady Queen of Peace and gathered the relevant documents. 

More on this Topic

In 2014, when Madam Fong died at the age of 83, Mr Lee helped her son with the funeral arrangements.

Her wake was three days long, with white and pink carnations around her coffin as she requested. Her ashes were later placed at the Church of St Mary of the Angels.

Beyond funeral services, Simplicity Casket also helps families preserve the memories of their loved ones through other ways.

It provides support for the ‘Loving Hands Project’ started by Peacehaven nursing home in late 2024, which allows seniors to immortalise themselves by making a hand imprint in clay plaster, that gets passed on to their next of kin.

Scanning a QR code sticker on the clay plaster will take users to a webpage with images of the senior. 

For seniors with no next of kin, their imprints will be placed in Peacehaven nursing home at Changi . 

Volunteers from Simplicity Casket visit the nursing home monthly to help with the project.

Simplicity Casket also provides welfare for the nursing homes that they work with. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Simplicity Casket, with the help of its parent company Singapore Casket provided nurses in Peace Haven nursing home with Sheng Siong vouchers. 

Asked what motivates the firm in its work , Mr Lee said: “Being able to send off individuals in a dignified manner motivates us to promote our pre-planning services so that we can help seniors have their wishes carried out according to what they want.”

More on this Topic

Join  ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.

Thanks for sharing!