with the rites completed and the coffin moved into the furnace for the cremation, the funeral ended. we were quickly ushered to the side of the prayer areas and asked to remove our mourning socks and patch. as everyone else was moved to cleanse themselves with flowered water, i was brought to the temple's administration office to complete the cremation administration. my long time friend, larry, who has attended the funeral came along. he had volunteered to chauffeur me back to the funeral parlour after all the paperwork. i gave him a tour of the temple after that.
back at the funeral parlour, my sisters were having their lunch. i joined in as there was nothing much to be done except to wait for 2pm where mum's ashes would be ready for collection. i quietly sat at the table and ate my vegetarian noodles as my sisters chatted away. the niece that came late was quietly eating her lunch too and she left early. my brother and his family wasn't there. he had brought them and my maid to the temple instead.
i decided to head to the crematorium early. my nieces (daughters of my eldest sis) came along in my car and i had the chance to catch up with them. it had been many years since i last spoke with them, given my eldest sis's refusal to talk to me after my dad passed away. one thing positive that came out of mum's funeral was that my eldest sis started talking to me. it was weird cos after all these years of not talking, suddenly she did so and even made ginseng tea for me. so... anyway, as we arrived early at the crematorium, i brought out my macbook and showed my nieces all the pictures of mum that i took over the years. soon, the columbarium rep came and at about 2pm, we were ushered into the ash collection room to collect mum's ashes.
in the room, we were asked to stand around a metal table before a plastic container containing the ashes was brought into the room. the temple assistant started to pick out some of the bigger pieces that he identified were those belong to her legs and displayed them to us. the urn was brought in and i had to place 8 coins inside the urn before everyone of us picked a piece of mum's bone and place it inside the urn. the bones belonging to the leg went in first. when each of us had completed placing a piece of the bone, the temple assistant took over and pour all the remaining content into the urn. he had to use a stick to crush the bone to compact them before placing the skull bones on top of the urn. once done, a piece of yellow cloth inscribed with buddhist scriptures was placed on top and the urn was closed. a piece of red cloth was then used to wrap the urn. a joss stick was then lighted and i was made to call out to mum (the urn) to tell her that we would be bringing her to the final resting place at the choa chu kang columbarium.
it rained badly as we made our way to the columbarium. we arrived at about 3.30pm. the monk and the contractor was there waiting for us. once i verified dad's niche, we were told to look away as the contractor smashed the marble slab that bore dad's name. it took him less than 5 minutes to break open dad's niche to expose dad's urn. once done, i placed mum's urn into the niche. i had to place 4 coins for the urn to sit onto. with both urns placed nicely, a new marble slab that bore both mum and dad's names was installed before more prayers was said. the whole ceremony ended about 5pm. mum was finally laid to eternal rest.
i was totally exhausted by the end of the day.
i slept relatively well that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment