i [heart] skulls

cool skull hairpins i got for me barfday

another discursive entry

mother's day came and gone. my birth mother's absence is still quite raw. subconsciously, maybe that explains why i checked out a book called How I Learned To Cook (& other writings on complex mother-daughter relationships) last week at the libary. i love the libary–even the tiny, musty bernal heights branch. on the other hand, this is something i'd read anyway, and it just happened to catch my eye.
over breakfast on april 28th, the day of my departure from taipei, my dad courageously gave us a little talk. he's a man of few words, and when those words come out they are chosen carefully and meaningfully. i liked our long breakfasts at the hotel. we noshed slowly and chatted. he acknowledged with empathy anne and i's tumultuous last few years, followed by 3 deaths in the last 9 months. he gave examples of inequality/favoritism exhibited by my uncles against their children. dad ensures us that he tries to make everything equal for anne and i, and if we ever think he's being unjust to speak up. the truth is nothing can be 50/50 but they try to get close. then. . [translated] now, the closest family you have is just me and ah-yi (my stepmom). if i happen to die first, then ah-yi will be your closest family. make sure you don't leave her out, and you can talk to her about anything. ah-yi will divide everything equally. we've already discussed things and made plans in case. and if ah-yi passes away first, then i will do the same. [the conversation was making me really sad. i was actually surprised at my dad's improved communication skills. yes, this is reality though. we have to talk about things like this sooner or later. death can be so unpredictable. dad mistakenly assumed that he'd go first, but ah-yi interrupted and said you never know. .she might go first. look at grandma. .who would have suspected!] point taken.
there were a lot of things my parents would never talk about. my mom (and dad too) carried a heavy onus around, which i think she tried to shed through meditation. i wish i had known what it contained. one of the stories i read in the How I Learned to Cook said: "My parents taught my sister and me how to keep things hidden in silence. . . During the stable periods my parents got along, my sister and I got involved with school, with our friends, with life in general. But it's the silence that kills you; it muffles, suffocates, and distorts your confusion and pain." thought the story dealt with the domestic violence against the author's mother, much of the emotional cycles and circumstances fit. silence characterized my teens.
by the time i thought i was starting to understand my mother and why she did the things she did, it was already too late. i wish i had asked more detailed questions and relieved some of the burden she took with her. with death, new relationships open up with the remaining close family members. i think my dad was partly trying to articulate this. maybe he also fears being shut out by our grieving. it was a way to reach out to us and let us know what we can be cohesive again.
i don't know what this all means, but it makes my mind churn. and i like to think and churn, even if it keeps me up at night.

bar

muerte, part II

since, grandma requested a cremation, we actually got to view her body a few times during the complicated ceremonies. her casket was behind the altar, hidden from attendees. i felt bad for the elders, like my dad, who had to kneel and prostrate twice as much as the young 'uns. he's got compressed disks and that eccentric coronary artery stenosis. for me the greatest tear-jerker was seeing how devoted my grandma's younger brother was. he was unsteady, with an altered gait and suffered from parkinson's. yet he still tried to kneel at one point. he dutifully paid his respects, and it was so touching. even my father cried, which was hard to see. i think after 2 previous funerals, one being that of my mom's, i became a bit more hardened and resistent. my cousin amber was sobbing. i wonder if they thought me callous for managing to keep tears from leaving my eye socket. i got lacrymose a few times but blinked them away instantly. my mother inured me. we avowed to her not to shed tears at her funeral.
after the rites at the hall, we were off to the crematorium. a huge, old-style limo hearse transported my grandmother. i was envious of those who got to ride in the hearse. i had to yield to the elders anyway. we all carpooled with the funeral people.
the crematorium also had those individual funeral halls. it was a huge facility. after some more praying and words from the monk, we sent grandma off to the oven. we were to wait until the burning was completed, about 2 hours. the most interesting event was the act of delicately placing the charred bony remains into grandma's huge jade urn. the temperature must not be as high as in the US, because there were big chunks of bone. i could even make out a sphenoid. the bone handler separated the pieces from feet to head. we all took turns using giant chopsticks to place a lower limb bone into the urn. then the handler carefully placed the rest, ending with the calverium. there was no ash. he even studied the skull and noted coral-colored patterns in the skull. this was not a common occurence and means the person had reached a certain level of moral rectitude, so to speak. there's not a perfect word in english, unfortunately. we were even invited to touch the patterns on the pieces of skull.

la muerte #3

grandma's altar at the funeral hall

i just returned from a 5-day trip to taiwan to attend my grandmother's funeral. my grandfather passed alway just last july. though seemingly healthy for her age, she perished as well. wow, i have no grandparents left. my grandmother's funeral was a bit different from her late husband's buddhist one. she had a taoist-buddhist-taiwan cultural rites mix. it was quite interesting to be involved in it. similar to grandfather's, we all participated in the funeral, had to pray/prostrate all day, and make scheduled trips to the altar for prayer/offerings. the actual day of ceremony lasted from 1pm until 6:30ish. like grandpa's, we had our own decorated "hall" with orchids galore and a lavish altar (see pic above). us participating family members wore the black, graduation-like smocks with a gauze thing specific to your familial ranking pinned to the right shoulder. us grandkids had a rice-colored 2x2 square. we also had to wear this gauze-like ribbon with a coin (unlike last time); it was status-specific. ours was blue. when dye stained my right wrist blue when i sweated or got it wet.