funeral woes

Kelly is the only person I know at this point who may know the boiling feeling of wanting to scream obscenities at someone, and having the obscenities at the back of the mouth too, ready to be screamed -- but can't because it'll make things worse.

I just had my history prelim paper. I did not do it very well. I'm hot, and tired, and my abdomen is writhing with menstrual cramps. I'm hungry. I want a bath. I want to sit down and strain all the history fluff from my brain and get ready for the next two papers, which are both tomorrow. The bus was very bumpy and my abdomen is writhing with damn menstrual cramps. My eyes hurt. I've just come home. Guess what.

Mum: Your grandfather's just died. You know, the one who ****. You'll need to go to his funeral. So sorry, hor.
Me: The man's more trouble dead and alive.

I quite regret that remark. But my mum has no tact and I have no self-control when it comes to such tactlessness. The moment I come home:

Mum: oh, you're back. You can vaccum the house.
Mum: why didn't you close the kitchen window when you left this morning?!
Mum: did you do any math today?

Me: BRISTLE.

I don't really mind going to my grandfather's funeral. I just don't think I should. And I wanted my mum to explain it in a way I could understand. But all she could say was 'he's your grandfather. You wouldn't be here without him.' HELLO, mum! I wouldn't be aware of that if I didn't exist! And then I'd be spared all this existential garbage keeping me awake every night!

And so I asked her to explain it in a way I could understand, but she had been upset at my intransigent indifference, and it went downhill from there.

Now.

Why shouldn't I go to my grandfather's funeral? Simple. The man was a wastrel. By some very strongly subjective accounts he was a lot worse than a wastrel-- even if I'm not exactly moved by the subjectiveness, the strength of the subjectiveness makes it clear that he had not been very nice. At least, all reports come back saying that he had dumped my grandmother and his eleven children on sprees with two other women, leaving them to the misery of utter poverty, no less.

Secondly. His funeral interrupts my examinations. It might be the prerogative of the dead to bother the living, but why now of all times do you want me to waste my precious mugging time at some meaningless fireworks show on the other end of Singapore? Why meaningless, you ask, since the burning body used to belong to my grandfather? SIMPLE.

I've seen the man for all of twice in my life.

He is a stranger. He never existed as anything more than a vague nuisance. I don't have anything against him personally, but there's nothing going for him either to make me go to his funeral. I view him as another person, no more and no less. People die every day. And what would I do if I had to mourn every other random dead person in the world? Today is September 11. A very memorable date, where hundreds of other random dead people had died in different ways. Some in a blaze of fanatical glory, some in a building rammed through by a mad plane -- some from heart attacks when they saw the evening news, maybe. Others killed by misfire in Iraq. Someone dying of kidney complications. I should have flown to America and cloned myself into a few hundred duplicates using Calvin's transmorgifier machine so that I could go to all their individual memorial services. But I didn't. I had a history paper this afternoon.

A funeral is a chance to pay someone his last measure of respect before his image fades beyond accurate retrieval by memory. If I go (as I am planning to, because I feel no personal attachment to him) with nothing but a vague interest in traditional Chinese customs and show respect, without actually having any, I will be being disrespectful. It would be much more respectful to remember him during lunch hour spontaneously as a shadowy wastrel of legend who might have been very nice if we could have talked to him properly. (hypothetical situation. I don't know how to speak Hakka.) Forcing me to turn up at a funeral is tantamount to having me perjure myself before all the sacred customs you like so much.

Funerals are for the comfort of the living. I don't know if they matter to the dead. If they do, then it is a good thing, but if they don't, it is still a good thing. The living need comfort from the fear of dying and the bereaved need the external predictability of ritual when they're preoccupied with wrestling with mighty inner conflicts. More so if they believe that the dead still need them: perhaps the duty will save them. It is all good. Moreover, if the dead really do need us to do rituals for them, then by all means we should. It's the least we could do. So why do I believe I should not go to my grandfather's funeral?

Because he was a stranger, and because there are people who can tend to him better, and because he has bloody legions of grandchildren. He was a very virile man. There are so many grandchildren that they just become a number. It's meaningless.

And because, from what I hear, the funeral will be a hotbed of extended-family politics among my ten aunts and uncles and their legions of children. (For simplicity's sake I will discount the presence of any half-aunts or half-uncles or their legions of children.) I see them more than twice in my lifetime. In fact I see them once every year. And I will be forced by courtesy to converse in my somehow inadequate chinese, at which I hear the spectre of all my ancestors laughing. I can deal without the extra stress at this point in time, thank you.

Okay, I've lost steam. I get angry very quickly, but I loose steam very quickly too. In any case, mother, threaten me again -- go on -- just try it. You'll like it.

As I've said before, I respect your culture. Please respect mine.

I think my mum's trying to make amends now. Ah well. Mum.

When I die, I would like only people I have ever liked to be there, but if they don't want to be there it's all right too. And I'd like everyone to sing Monty Python at my funeral. Yes, that song!