by Annie Liu
My grandmother’s funeral was the first I had ever attended. The only impression of funerals I had before was from movies, in which people dressed in black gathered inside a church or simply mounted a photo of the dead on an altar. My grandmother was a very traditional Taiwanese woman with a calendar of rituals memorized inside her head. Therefore when she passed away, my father followed her will and gave her an extremely traditional funeral. The day when the doctors decided that they could do nothing more for her, my father decided to take her home. An ambulance was hired, too. The tradition that one must die at home has been passed down in my family; my great grandmother died in the hall of our traditional three-section compound and so did my grandmother. It is considered best to die on a bed in the family hall with your descendents around you. Before she died all her descendents were asked to go outside and crawl back in while crying as loud as they could. It was unbearable to see my father melt into tears, shouting “Mom! Mom! Mom!” over and over. As soon as the last of her heartbeat was quiet, the staff of the funeral company came inside to rinse her with a special Chinese liquid in order to clear her of all her sins, and to change her into a purple shroud. A simple altar was set up in the yard, and we were told to put on mourning apparel, each person’s varying depending on his or her position in the family. The girls had to wear long white headgear that dangled at the back, while the sons and eldest grandson wore hemp-made caps and clothes. We were also told to pin a piece of yellow cloth on our right arm and tie a white cloth with a 10 NT dollar coin on our wrist. We stood in rows in front of the altar holding incense while three Taoist priestesses started to read a sutra aloud. There was also a band playing in an exaggeratingly joyous tone; the wind carried the noise far away into the serene country night. This ritual was meant to clear the road for grandmother’s spirit and to lead her to the underworld. Meanwhile, one person had to stay inside the hall at her feet and burn paper money for her traveling expenses. The reading of the sutra went on for hours, with recesses in between. That was only the first night and the beginning of the seemingly inexhaustible traditions. Traditional Taiwanese believe that you need seven days to ensure the death of a person. Therefore, “Making the Seventh” was required, chanting the sutra every seventh day and lasting for 49 days in total. My family chose a simplified way, only making two sevenths. For the first seventh, all our family from around the world gathered together. More chanting was performed. Specific sutras were chosen for the dead. In grandmother’s case, since she had been ill for a long time and took a lot of medicine, the priestess read a drug sutra to purify her soul. At the end of the chanting, the priestess set up an iron cage where we placed paper money and paper furniture. The family held onto a nylon line and formed a circle around the iron cage while the paper money burned, to guard grandmother’s money from homeless ghosts. The day before the funeral, more people from the funeral company came. They performed acrobatics such as jumping over fire, turning dishes with sticks, riding a one-wheeled bike, and playing with fire sticks. The performers were all extremely young, the youngest still in elementary school. The performance was meant to entertain the dead as well as to ease the pain of the living. Four women dressed in colorful outfits did some traditional dances, their age ranging from 17 to 50. A bench was set up and a mat laid out in the yard. People started throwing coins and candies onto the mat, and a woman stood on the bench and arched her back to pick them up with her mouth. Then, a guy brought a huge bucket of water for people to throw coins into, and miraculously the woman dipped her head into the water and picked all of them up with her mouth. The next day we woke up at four in the morning to put grandmother into her coffin at an auspicious hour. More trucks arrived, bringing with them a band that was formed by a group of middle-aged women in heavy makeup and exaggeratedly narrow skirts. After the public memorial ceremony, some men lifted the coffin and we left for the graveyard. Those whose astrological animal signs might offend grandmother were forbidden to look at the burial. We read more sutras, then finally settling the coffin into the grave. As soon as we got back to our traditional compound, we threw the piece of white cloth tied to our wrist into the fire, keeping the 10 dollar coin that was said to bless us. The funeral finally came to an end, yet the hustle and bustle still echoes inside my head, reminding me of my grandmother’s farewell. a
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May 2024
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