Within a month, we finished all the Chinese rituals of the last journey so quickly. During COVID-19 pandemic, it’s difficult to organize a decent funeral in a traditional funeral home. Since the traditional funeral home was closed, we needed to organize my grandma’s funeral in another way. Just like other ordinary Chinese families, my mum would like to organize a big funeral for my grandma originally, so she felt unsatisfied because a big funeral symbolizes “prosperity” for the family. Finally, we didn’t invite a lot of relatives and friends to come. Only close relatives who lived in the same district in Hong Kong were invited. More importantly, according to my grandma’s will, we organized a simple funeral, so that we could also save money. It’s our first time to organize a simple funeral in my family.
On my grandma’s great funeral day, we wore masks and white clothes and went to Tuen Mun Hospital. When children and grandchildren wore white clothes, “white” symbolizes “filial piety” and “respect”. My aunt (yi-ma, my mother’s elder sister) didn’t come on the funeral day because she would like to avoid “unluckiness” and wanted to keep a good image of my grandma. Indeed, the coffin design was quite horrible that could associate of “ghost”. My grandma’s body was moved from Yuen Long Pok Oi Hospital to Tuen Mun Hospital. And then, her body was sent to a little room.
We invited a si-fu to help my grandma to do some Chinese rituals to let her go to reincarnation smoothly. Everybody didn’t cry inside this little room. After walking around my grandma’s coffin for a round, her body would be sent to a crematorium, where her body would undergo an environmental-friendly cremation. As I recall, my mother used her Zhongshan dialect to tell my grandma to leave without worries when she pressed push-button that let my grandma’s coffin move down.
Unlike traditional Chinese funerals, my grandma’s funeral was very simple, and she left us so silently. Without a big funeral, I hope that my grandma could still rest in peace. And her soul would go to the heaven if she didn’t choose reincarnation.