Original link: https://kaix.in/2023/0805-funeral/
Grandpa also passed away at the age of ninety-six; so far all the close relatives of the grandparents have passed away. Anyone who grew up in northern China probably had the experience of being tortured at a funeral. Kneeling and crying loudly, I used to hate these false performative rituals. But when I grow older and don’t care about other people’s eyes, I no longer perform, and find that it is indeed a convenient way to remember the dead. When I looked at their portraits and kowtowed, all the things in the past appeared naturally. However, do you need a convenient way to remember your loved ones? I originally planned to visit my grandfather in a few days, but I never expected to see him again; I just walked into the mourning hall and faced his portrait, and I already burst into tears.
The feeling of helplessness in grief can cause people to fall to the ground, and our funeral here is to do a throwing ceremony to express grief. When I was young, I thought this was the source of the problem, and I wanted to learn from the customs of Taiwan and Japan to improve it. But now I feel that there is no real meaning in substituting one set of rituals for another set of rituals. For Chinese people who are not good at expressing—sometimes I even maliciously speculate that many people of the previous generation did not have much room for family affection at all—may indeed need a fixed process to help themselves grieve. So, even though the grandpa’s funeral was originally intended to be a memorial service, some relatives insisted on kneeling and weeping bitterly. The key to the problem is how to accept the truth and abandon the falsehood, how to love with the heart, and how to remember. And these can no longer be hoped that others will create a set of rituals to teach.
fin.
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