She's Leaving on an Airplane

I've never been much for grieving. I'm usually away from home when a death happens and that always seems to dampen things for me. Maybe it's just because I wasn't close to my grandmother but I've always had the fear that I won't feel it if someone in my immediate family died. Nonetheless, the funeral was disturbing. It wasn't so much in a creepy sense as it was a distinct confusion about how they could actually have these traditions and still deem them respectful. But I should start at the beginnning.

12:00 AM Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) Time

When I first got into Cho Lon (yes, I read it as cholon too) last night, most of my aunts and uncles were waiting for me. Cho Lon is Ho Chi Minh city's Chinatown. Most of the community here was a result of the mass exodus from China due to the Japanese occupation. People had heard about the horrors of what happened farther north (I suspect the events of Nanjing) and decided it was better to flee. They all ended up here and it's funny. Everyone looks Vietnamese but perfect Cantonese spurts out of their mouths.

The extended family all live in a three level apartment that's tucked away in an alleyway. It was about 12:30 at night and surprisingly, most of the neighborhood was still awake. Immediately they shuffled me over to a brightly lit room where I quickly realized grandma's casket was being displayed. It was this colorful, gold lined, ornate piece of work -- decorated much like old Chinese Buddhist pagodas. Mom asked me if I wanted to see her face. Oddly I agreed to. I was expecting a sunken face and a body without the benefits of embalming. Surprisingly though, she looked different, but not in the dead sense. I know it's cliched but it seemed like she was just sleeping. Her glasses were off too, so you could actually see her face. Despite that though, the heeby jeebies came and I shuffled away. I felt fake and sacriligeous for looking. It's like I had no right to look at her without feeling the grief I should have been feeling. I hoped I wouldn't have to look at her again.

7:00 AM HCMC Time

I grunt as loud bells and cymbals blast in through the window. Downstairs Buddhist ritualists have already begun the ceremony. Despite getting up before my cousin, he makes it downstairs before I do. I brought a black formal outfit in preparation for this but mom tells me to wear something white. I feel bad about it, but all I have is the old white button down I have from last night. Gotta deal. My 7th Aunt hands me a white arm band with a red dot in the center and tells me to put it on. I have no idea what it's for but I oblige.

As I walk down the stairs I am met by the blast of bright light. There are unsheltered incandescent bulbs everywhere and my lungs fill up with the scent of the million sticks of incense. All of my aunts and uncles are fully dressed in these outfits of thin white cloth similar to my armband. There are 8 roasted pigs lined up in front of the casket that I assume are sacrifices. What surprised me though is that there is a guy with a video camera going around, recording every moment. Now mind you, the idea of taking pictures of the ceremony passed my mind but I left my camera in my room because I thought it'd be disrespectful. Apparently not.

One of grandma's great grandchildren (my nephew) asks where Grandma's going. My aunt simply says that she's going on an airplane. He actually accepts this reasoning and I'm amazed at how naive a child can be. In a way, I'm kinda jealous. Maybe it's appropriate though. I have the same emotions as if she were actually getting on an airplane.

Things progress as I expect, with all of us walking up and praying with incense. While my cousins are farther up, I'm placed at the back of the line of relatives because my mother was the one related to grandma (boo paternal priority!). We kneel, bow, step back, and then my jaw drops.

There's a fucking marching band coming down the alley.

I mean there's drums, trombones, the whole shebang. They play these ridiculously upbeat tunes than make me wonder why they were even hired. And then there's this guy at the front with a weird greasy mullet who's only purpose seems to be spinning some small metal thingie. I'm like ok. This isn't that weird, maybe it's some residual tradition from french military burials or something. And then all sanity goes out the window.

Greasy mullet guy starts balancing shit on his face. First it's his hat, then its a chair, then it's multiple chairs with one of the roasted pigs on top, and then it's one of the big metal tables. I lean over to my fifth uncle and ask if this is normal. He responds, "Normal? This is freaking expensive. When your granddad died, all we had for his funeral was a single chicken." Suddenly I felt like the scout who warned the captain of the Titanic about the iceberg. How could no one else see how disrespectful this was?!

But another marching band comes right in and does the same thing. I give up at that point. I think to myself, it can't get any worse right? Thankfully, this is one of the few times I'm right.

The casket is loaded onto a truck and the family walks behind it, followed by all of the neighbors. It's the weirdest feeling ever. Even though I'm not grieving, it feels as if my life has been exposed to the world as I walk in the funeral procession. Literally hundreds of people on the side streets watch us as we walk by.

Eventually a few buses take us to the cemetery. Mom is praying four times each time on behalf of everyone in our family who's absent. We walk around the casket three times clockwise and counterclockwise to fulfill the buddhist trisomy. Annoyingly (to me at least), the marching band has followed us and as we begin moving her casket to the open grave, there is a blast of dissonant sound between them and the buddhist ritualists playing their gongs. I blame this for my current headache.

At the grave the casket is lowered in and we all kneel. The man I assume to be the ordained buddhist priest throws a chicken across the grave to my 3rd uncle and the family asks the workers to orient her grave as northeast as possible for fengshui. We each throw a handful of dirt in and the cemetery workers begin burying the rest of her. We all remove our white prayer clothing and it seems that this is a way to signify the end of our grieving.

At some point my 4th uncle suggests I go see my 7th uncle's grave (who's buried in the same cemetery. He came here for his son's wedding and died of liver cancer) but everyone yells out that we can't today and says to go home. To purify ourselves, we walk over a burning piece of "currency of the dead" and head home on the bus.

12:00 PM HCMC Time

When we get back all the pigs have been chopped up. Some of it's been put into baguettes and these are passed out to everyone in the neighborhood. The rest is eaten by hand. Mom tries handing me a pig's foot. I try it but it's filled with way too much fat. The prayers continue for a few hours more until it finally ends with the family each placing a single stick of incense on the altar.

Surprisngly, after the initial ceremony, everyone is relatively cheerful. There are jokes and people interact like there wasn't even a funeral earlier in the day. Maybe it's the denial period for everyone, but it's unnerving for me. I know I'm not grieving that much, but shouldn't everyone else be?