In Continuum.

On Funerals

There are a million different lies that parents tell their children in order for them to behave, and my parents are certainly not spared from that claim. My father used to tell me that by cutting our nails at night, we are going to lose a bit of memory every time. He was also the same man who told me that the moon would cut your ears if you point at it with your index finger. That is probably why I made sure that there was sunlight before cutting my nails in the past, or the way I would point at the moon with my thumb or ring finger instead. And there he would be, snickering in the background at how susceptible to lies from adults.

My mother was also my father's accomplice, by telling me that to look at somebody else's funeral would bring along bad luck. So whenever the car drove by a void deck with a funeral going on, I would shield my eyes or turn my head away from the window, afraid that the bad luck plague would follow me for the rest of my life. The reason to my mother's superstition was never fully explained, but I guess like the lie about watermelons growing on your head if you swallow the seeds, they have very little basis and logic to speak of.

Which was why - when I attended my grandparents' funerals - I was surprised when I was allowed to look directly at - well, everything. My mother no longer came to cover my eyes, or ask me to turn away from the funeral event itself. Instead, the relatives and I were forced to sit down at a table and fold paper flowers all day long until our fingers turned red due to the printed ink. Those folded papers would then be tied together to make a water lily, then burned on the night before the coffin is taken out of the house for burial. At least that is the tradition amongst the Chinese, and I remember going through the motion as a child, in more awe and interest rather than sadness and depression.

During my grandmother's funeral, I spent the time aside from folding paper flowers, lurking around the place and burning insects on the ground with lighters. Lighters were in abundance, because incense sticks were supposed to burn twenty-four hours around the clock during a Chinese funeral. The relatives of the deceased would take turns to keep the fire burning at night, sleeping next to the coffin that is hidden behind yellow-colored veils in the living room. I stayed away from that part of the house most of the time, fearing the sight of the coffin as well as being allergic to the smoke that clouded the lights in the house. Along the road outside my grandmother's place was my playground, and I hung out under the shelter of the tent most of the time, away from the smoke and away from the soft whimpers in the kitchen that drifts through the door every once in a while.

The night before the burial, everybody would be gathered outside the house for a ceremony of sorts. The male members of the family weren't allowed to shave for forty nine days - I think - and they were all made to wear hats that were sharpened at the end to look like those caps the Ku Klux Klan used to wear in the past, but without the facial mask to cover the face of course. The hat had a long tail that rested on the back of the wearer, and the costume is completed with a dress of sorts made from the same rough, thick material. The younger children were spared from wearing them, but were forced to join in the ceremony around the fire as well. There was a Chinese priest in the middle, standing there in the gloom of the fire with a book in his hands and a ring of beads in the other. Chanting slowly under his breath in a language I did not understand, the members of the family would repeat the words over as he threw the folded flowers and paper money into the raging fire.

I remember how the papers burned in the iron cage, and how the fire almost went out of control and managed to burn a hole in the side of the furnace itself. The lights flicked in the eyes of the people then, and some of those eyes had tears trickling down quietly over those strong faces, the ones with a broken spirit underneath. But I was not moved then, not even at the sight of the tears that came down like the rain that fell in the night soon after.

I saw the rain as a lament for my grandmother in a way, and heard the screen doors upstairs slamming shut every time the wind blew it open. Like a way one would weep for a lost love, the angels must have been weeping for my grandmother at night. Not for their loss, but the welcoming of one of their children home, perhaps. That night, everybody was supposed to sleep in the house, to accompany my grandmother for the last night before she is officially 'on her way'. I remember sleeping on her bed on the second floor, and her bedsheets smelled the way old people would. Mingled with that was the smell of moth balls in her closet, and the taste of age was strong in the air as well. The picture of my grandparents stood on the end of the bed, already faded and turned yellow after all these years. Still, the woman in the picture looked so foreign, so distant all of a sudden, and I couldn't recognize my grandfather at all. Studying the patch of moist ceiling board on top of my head then, I fell into an uneasy sleep when I dreamed of my grandmother coming up the staircases and visiting me in my bed. This, I never told my mother - in fear of bringing tears to her eyes. But I did dream of it that night, and it was a kind of warmth I have little words in my vocabulary bank to describe. It was just - comfortable.

Despite everything, I've always tried to avoid funerals to be honest. Though I have grown up, and know that what my mother told me about looking away is merely a lie, I still have little courage to look into eyes of the members attending a funeral, or anything that has got to do with the event itself. Even during the high school days when we had to sneak through a hole in the fence to get to the bus stop, the funerals held in the crematorium next door never occurred to me as being something interesting. My curiosity never reached that far before, but I remember the road that led up to the funeral with the wailing daughter long ago.

Getting home wasn't an easy thing back in the high school days, simply because of the fact that our school was located on top of a hill. Mount Vernon stands in the middle of nowhere, and the road that leads home involves a road of broken tiles and down to the nearest bus stop a mile away. Due to the fact that my high school is built on the ground that used to be a cemetery, the main road that leads to the school has to be built around the graves in order to allow cars to come in and out freely. Now, when I say that my school was built on cemetery grounds, I am not just talking about some urban legends some seniors conjured. The story is true, and everybody in Singapore knows about the infamous Mount Vernon. Besides, the cemeteries that surround our school are in favor of that claim, so what is there not to believe in?

There wasn't a direct route down to the bus stop, save for that long winding road that I took for about four years. We never liked that route, simply because of how narrow the pavement is and how close we get to the traffic on our left. So the adventurous bunch of people in school - which included myself - decided to look for shorter routes out of the school through the crematorium next to the main entrance.

Somehow, we managed to find a hole in the fence at the bottom of the slope next to the main road that led directly to the bus stop on the other side of the crematorium. The boys and I would crawl through the hole on all fours, then entering the premises of the crematorium without permission, despite knowing that we were obviously trespassing. But the urge to get home earlier everyday was great, and the possibility of getting caught was enough to give the boys a rush of blood to the head. Anyway, so we marched on through the shelves of urns, lined up neatly in all directions. The black and white pictures of the deceased would stare back at us blankly, as if to ask about our reasons for being there, if we were there to visit them at all. I remember praying in my heart to one of the old man there back then, after Timothy spat into the drain right in front of his urn, and the way the old man seemed to follow the pack of boys as we continued down the road towards the bus stop.

The smell was thick in the air, like it always does when somebody is being cremated. Sitting in our classrooms sometimes, we'd smell a strong aroma of burning flesh drifting in through the windows. 'Somebody is burning', someone would say, and life went on as usual in the classrooms. But standing there, a hundred meters down the road from where the chimney was, we tried our best to ignore the smell of death in the air. Smoke poured out from the chimney like the head of a coal-powered train, and death was everywhere around us. From down the road, the wailing of a woman could be heard from where we were, moaning and screaming to the death of her mother. The boys peeked over the bushes then, all trying to get a good view of what was going on over the hedge. But I remained there, with my back against the scene, praying in my heart that the wailing would stop and the smell would clear. But she kept on crying, and the smell lingered in the air and seeped into my uniform. The smell of death, all around...all around.

I wish that I can be like my uncle, who has a rather strange outlook on death itself. I guess if Death were to knock on his door tonight, my uncle is going to make a sarcastic joke in his face, then stuff the sickle up Death's ass. That the kind of man my uncle is, never succumbing to fate and always creating his own paths and ways. Even in the face of facts, he seldom admits to his emotions or the situation, but would rather take a twist to it and lighten up the mood. I'm sure you guys are lost here, so let me explain.

When his mother passed away in China, they held the funeral at a crematorium as well. Just as the body was about to be sent into the furnace, his elder sister started wailing like the woman I mentioned before in front of the furnace, begging for the employees at the crematorium not to burn her mother. My uncle got frustrated and irritated by his sister, and uttered the following words," If you don't want them to do it, bring the body home." Yeah, he can be rather straight forward at times, but that's my uncle. Cool headed, and frank.

When his father died from old age, the same thing happened again at the crematorium. Only this time, his sister did not knee in front of the furnace and cry, but remained composed and controlled throughout the ceremony. When the ceremony was done and the body was burned, the ashes were dished out from the furnace and transferred into the urn by a representative of the family. My uncle was there to receive the urn, and the moment he had his palms on the side of the porcelain, he said aloud to the rest," Wow, Dad's still hot!"

I wish that I can have the same kind of outlook on death as my uncle in a way. I'm sure everybody fears death to a certain degree, but not everybody has to turn their backs to it - like I did while trespassing through the cemetery. Everybody - including my uncle - must fear death one way or another as well. However, he looks upon it with such courage that it becomes something to be admirable of in a way. People say that fearing death is the only way that you are going to fully live your life. But I see none of that quote in my uncle, but rather the reverse of it. I think that is how you live your life to the fullest: By staring death in the face and say that if King Kong has nothing on you, Death doesn't stand a chance either.

When it comes to funerals - or deaths - I've always adverted my eyes and shunned away from the topic. As much as I am interested in it, facing it in real life is always another thing altogether. Be it walking pass a funeral of a stranger underneath a void deck, or attending a relative or a friend's. I've never had the courage to look it in the face, and admit that it is the inevitable, that it is going to happen to any one of us, sooner or later. However, if we can all put down the burden of fear, I guess there isn't a need for tears on the faces or wailing in the air. Because the future is the unknown, and it is a long distance away. Now, is what we should always look at. And the ongoing life, is happening - right. now.