I arrived two days before the final ceremony. Therefore, besides the final ceremony, I also attended the last ritual before the final ceremony.
The conventional practice was that the relatives will either have the altar at home or rent a place in the mortuary. In this case, the altar was at my uncle’s house. Before the ritual, with my mom, I first visited my aunt, one of her older sisters. Her place was about 100 meters away from her brother’s. She lived in an old building, from the first floor to the second floor. The ground floor belonged to someone else. The only entrance was through a narrow and steep stairs. She showed me her bedroom. Surprisingly, her bed was consisted of 3 mattresses. She wanted to have a nice mattress for a comfortable sleep. She was not satisfied with the first one, then added up another one, still unsatisfied, so that she bought the third one. She said the mattresses were too big and too heavy for her to carry it down stairs. She just let them pile on top of each other. Now, she had to first climb on top of a chair to get on top of the bed.
The ritual started at 18.00 and lasted for 2 hours. There should be a priest with two assistances. However, one of the assistances ran into a car accident, so that the ritual started with a priest and a assistance. The priest was a rather young looking man. He must be a big fan of Crayon Shin-chan. Not only his bag had a Shin-chan image, but also the handbell was accessorised with Shin-chan on the hand bar. The assistance was a middle age woman. I noticed that she wore a pair of anti-slip socks. Well, how did I know? Because she wore them upside down, on both of her feet.
The ritual was basically all about chanting sutura. The sutura of the day was Bhaiṣajyaguru-vaiḍūryaprabha-rāja-sūtra. During different rituals, there will be different sutra be chanted, such as Diamond Sutura and Avalokiteśvara-vikurvạna-nirdeśaḥ. Mortician provided booklets, so that everyone can participate in the chanting. In the middle of the ritual, the other assistance showed up. She joined the chanting, but obviously out of breath. In the end of the ritual, the priest asked us to pick up food into grandma’s plate. It was following the order of age, sex, and the closeness of the relationship with grandma. As the daughter of her married daughter, I am the last one to go in front of the altar. There were 12 dishes and most of them has been picked up at least once. I asked mom: “what should I pick up?” “Whatever, just do it !” I found out that a plate of stirred fried broccoli was untouched, so I decided to pick a piece of broccoli into grandma’s plate.
The day after was going to be the final ceremony. Therefore, soon after the ritual, the altar was removed. It was removed as dissembling a piece of a Lego toy. It took mortician maxim 10 minutes to removed the altar. Meanwhile, we, the rest of the relatives, were burning paper money besides the road. It felt very dangerous, since there were motorcycles and cars driving through, and sometimes the burning papers will drop outside the metal basin. My uncle and his oldest son carried the photo of grandma and the spirit tablet, following the priest to the mortuary.
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