Last week, mom informed me that grandma, her mother, passed away. She was 102 years old. A century is too long for anyone. She had outlived all of her siblings, her husband, and one of her daughter. Longevity is not a blessing. She had the last breath in her beloved daughters arms. She is free now. Freedom doesn’t come easy.
Traditional Taiwanese funeral usually takes a long time, about a month. Therefore, there was enough of time for me to get administration things done, buy tickets, and fly back to Taiwan. In between, there will be several rituals. Every seven days mark as the cycle. The first ritual will be the 7th day after the death date. The first ritual is always in the midnight, from 22.00-24.00. The rest of the rituals can be scheduled differently depending on the availability of the family members. Taiwanese funeral has so many rules and customs. It will grind off all your grief. The complexities of the rituals make you numb, and detached from the reality.
It is believed that the deceased is not yet ready to leave this world. The livings have the duty to inform and to help the deceased to embark the journey. The funeral is the process for guiding the deceased toward the other world, which is basically the replica of this world. There will be material as well as emotional need, just as the world we are living in right now. How to cope with the emotional need? Chanting sutra. During the rituals, the livings shall invite the deceased to listen to the sutra and thus be emotionally prepared to face their own death. How to cope with the material need? Burning paper money (of course, fake money, but bought with the real money in this world) and paper miniature of various objects, ranging from mansions to pets, everything imaginable. Through fire, the objects are believed to be delivered. Since there are so many objects on the lists, imaginably, the funeral can end up very costly. Between the rituals, the livings will practice paper folding (origami), typically for making lotus and sycee. Then, eventually lotus and sycee will be fed to fire and believed to be delivered. Most of the time, people just burn the objects (e.g., fake money or paper miniatures) and wishfully believe that they are transferred. The logic behind is very egocentric and flawed: I want it to be delivered, since it disappeared, it must be delivered.
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