2005 年 1 月 26 日 星期三 【晴】

Everything is over now


Everything is done now.

The whole funeral has finished.

I am now back to the hostel,
still bewildered and kind of upset.

____________________________

Funeral.

In my mind,
It should be peaceful and quiet,
With people paying respect to the one passed away.

But,
It turned out the whole Chinese funeral,
( in the Dao custom)
is full of chaos.

Because I am a Christian,
I didn't help folding the paper money,
or burning it,

And I didn't light up the joss sticks.

I sit all day in the funeral house,
doing nothing.

My cousins gathered around the burner,
threw in the paper money,
and asked grandma to pick them up "down there".

As the funeral went on for the whole day,
we were asked to bow and bow again.

My great Uncle had to follow the guys in costumes to walk,
then kneel,
then walk,
and so on.

Nobody seemed to understand what's going on,
but nobody would ask why we should do this.

I was not at all "into" the whole thing,
when they asked me to follow them,
and bow,
I did.

But my baseline is that I would not burn joss sticks and the fake money.

___________________________________

I sit there and think,
how come we have to do this?

This does not mean any offence.
I respect my grandma a lot.

But I just don't get the point why we had to pay a few hundred bucks to those guys in costumes,
and watched them perfom (sort of) a dance called "break the hell".

What's the point of having these guys singing loud all day,
with those lyrics that we don't understand at all?



I understand that this is part of our culture,
and it's a ceremony.

but What's the point of having a ceremony that we don't understand at all?

Nobody knows when we have to stand up and bow,
when we have to walk around some burning paper,
or when we have to lower our face.

It's because the man in charge said we have to do this,
then we did.

Then what's the point?


It feels almost like someone grabs your arms and forces you to perform a drama to an audience.

___________________________

The guests came,
burnt some joss sticks,
took some bows.

and then started to chat among themselves on some other stuff.

It seemed weird.
The funeral became a social gathering.

Aren't it supposed to be a time we sit down and pay respect,
remembering the one passed away?

It's so noisy, crowdy and stuffy (because of the fire and joss sticks).
Every time I wanted to concentrate,
I got a headache.

_________________________

Everybody got tired.

But I don't feel like I got anything out of the funeral.

not even some memories.

I feel sad.

_____________________

At the dinner time,
everyone changed their white clothes,
and put on their normal casual wear.

I wore a maroon jersey,
and my aunt sort of scolded me for putting on something in red.

I didn't say anything,
but quietly zipped up my light blue jacket.

She was extremely sensitive the whole night,
and even scolded my mom for asking if one of grandma's friends would take the left over (some bread) back to feed his doggies.

The whole table freezed.
Nobody dared to speak a word.

My Sis and I got extremely tensed,
and wanted to get going desperately.

I got mad at her as well,
but didn't say anything.

She has always been like that,
not respecting my parents. (though she is the younger sister of my dad)
Coz she thought my dad is not outstanding,
just an accountant clerk,
not as brilliant as my great uncle.

My mom is sick and weak,
and my dad didn't pay a lot money for her to take care of Grandma.

But it's obvious,
my mom's medication already burnt up my dad's salary.

I got really upset when I left the feast.

__________________________

To be honest,
I DON'T want my funeral to be anything like this.

I love my grandma,
I wish I could have something better for her.

Playing the music she likes,
Inviting some friends to talk about her in front of everyone,
Sharing some photos of her,
Seeing her smile in the black and white pictures.

I am not biased towards the Western ceremony.

But it seemed to have more meaning to me,
instead of having some unknown guys performing a silly dance,
and asking people to follow rules that no one understands.

>>January 26, 2005 at 8:25:54 PM GMT+8