February 14, 2009

  • The funeral for my wife's grandmother went well. Having friends and families coming together for a unifying moment was nice. I was even part of the family party and was one of the pallbearers, so it was a little surreal for me. Here I was thinking I was "just the husband" to my wife, but there I was representing her family. Still things I'm learning about being a married man now.

    I wasn't really sure what to expect from a Buddhist funeral, and me being from a non-Buddhist background (not to mention that I did not speak Taiwanese), I had to take cues from my wife as to what I had to do. For the most part it wasn't that complicated. There were some heartfelt eulogies and the family (including me!) were personally given condolence by the people who attended. I was thinking in my head that they were probably thinking "who is *that* guy?"

    A funny thing happened on the way to the burial site. A lot of us did not follow the hearse that carried the grandmother. Logically we were all thinking that's what we had to do, but the person who was "in charge" of the whole thing (my wife's uncle) took off to the site, and everybody just followed suit. It turned out that he was just going to show somebody *how* to get there and was intending to come back, and we all just took it as "oh okay, I guess we go now."

    The burial itself went well, with the Buddhist monks there, we had a final prayer, several bowing, incense were lit, and we burned the paper money thingee. It was all just really nice, especially since it's my first real experience being part of a funeral as an adult and not being a child who doesn't really understand what's going on. A few hours later, me and the wife visited her aunt's home, and it actually felt weird not seeing her grandma there (that was the last place she stayed at). Although I did not really get to know her that well, she was always nice to me, and I'm glad to have met her.