Funeral
we attended a funeral ceremony yesterday, for the mother of one of lady d's childhood friends. they hadn't met for a long time, but lady d was close to her friend's mother, so we were invited to the ceremony.
as is common here in taiwan, at least in the more rural areas, the mother, who died three weeks ago, had been lying in a coffin in their home all this time. the lunar calendar, which is a bit like a farmer's almanack, specifies which days are auspicious for placing a deceased person in a coffin, which days are auspicious for moving the coffin out of the house, for funeral ceremonies and burials, and so on. in this case, they had to wait for three weeks for that to occur.
it was the same when lady d's grandmother died. they slept with the coffin with the dead body in their bedroom for three weeks. the smell was not nice, she says.
while waiting for our turn to pay our respects to the deceased and her family, i noticed, quite casually, that there was no lunch offered, nor was there any meat or fruit or other food on the altar in front of the big photograph of the deceased. i don't know why i thought about it, i've been to several funerals here and never been offered lunch - maybe its the taiwanese obsession with food and eating that is having an effect after all these years. there has almost always been some food offerings on the altar, though. this time, there was just flowers, the burning incense and the powder (don't know what kind of powder) that you hold up in front of the deceased's photograph and then sprinkle in a small bowl before bowing to the photograph, the male side of the family to the right, and then the female side of the family to the left.
after the ceremony, we went to visit lady d's family before returning to taipei. although i haven't picked up enough taiwanese to participate in a conversation yet, i still find it agreeable to sit there and listen to the words filling the room. they sit there, maybe eat some fruit, and just talk with each other. it's a small village on the coast, so it's very quiet, apart from the occassional neighbor walking by, exchanging a few words about the weather or the latest gossip through the open door or window. they're always invited in, and sometimes they accept the invitation and come in and participate in the conversation. for some reason i find it comforting to sit there and listen to their mostly incomprehensible conversation, so relaxed, existing in the moment. i don't know, maybe it reminds me of my childhood summers in the swedish countryside.
the topic today, i realized after a while, was why there was no food at the funeral. pa, especially, couldn't wrap his head around that idea, and the conversation circled the topic for a long time. but the body was going to be cremated and most often that isn't the case in a traditional funeral, so maybe they only followed a few of the traditions. he had even bigger problems understanding why there wasn't any food on the altar. "what's she going to eat?" lady d, always direct, said that "she's dead, pa. how can she eat?" that was a thought that probably never had crossed his mind, and when he had it served up so directly, he just went blank for a second, before everyone, including him, started laughing when they realized the absurdity of what he had just said.
but that's the way things go around here. people don't really think about these things. it's not really a matter of belief, but more a matter of tradition, they way it has always been done. pa always burns incense to the ancestors in the evening, holding it up in three directions outside the house before placing it on the big ancestral altar along the main wall in the living room. on special holidays they also arrange food offerings at the family tomb and place food on the altar together with cups of tea, and they of course burn paper money. i don't think they believe that their ancestors will actually use the money or eat the food, it's just the way it is done, it's part of their lives, just as you eat and brush your teeth without actually thinking about why you do it.