Requiem

It was pouring when I arrived at the Hung Hom funeral parlour on Kowloon side. Parlour is hardly the right word to describe the building and rain is hardly the right description of the weather. This was no wimpy English drizzle. This was tropical wet season drenching. Even with an umbrella it was just as well that it was only a few metres from the cab to the covered entrance. I made it without being totally soaked but the downpour mirrored my mood.

The funeral parlour was not what you would expect in most other places either. This was a six-story building covering a whole block . Every floor had two or more cavernous rooms to cater for a funeral farewell in each one. The locals sardonically called it Dai Jau Dim, the big hotel.

I was there to pay my respects and to farewell the love of my life. The mourning goes without saying. Grief had settled over me like a dull grey blanket, turning the whole world monochrome:-

The events taking place were enumerated on a big board just inside the entrance. The one I was attending was on the fifth floor. The lifts were huge, large enough to hold two or three coffins. You couldn’t crowd the departed. I joined a throng which thinned out as mourners were decanted at each floor. There were still half a dozen exiting along with me on the fifth.

I mentally prepared myself for the coming ordeal. These sessions were like no western funeral . Where ours last only an hour or two a Taoist farewell lasts for two days. There is no prayer session followed by a wake at some relative’s home. The event itself is almost festive. There is no funereal black. The Cantonese colour of death is white, leavened by red trimmings on the decorative buntings that festoon the walls of the room where the ceremony takes place.

Six Taoist priests in yellow robes move in a circle on one side of the hall, chanting what is presumably a prayer or a benediction and ringing small bells as they move. They have a leader, who is in a cyan robe with electric blue edging. Their motion is constant, non-stop, hypnotic.

Friends and more distant relatives mill around, sitting, standing, chatting and eating dim sum in a quarter of the open space and close family are seated on the left, receiving the guests and thanking them for coming to pay their respects.

Pride of place is taken by a large portrait of the deceased where we would have an altar. It is surrounded by ‘gifts’ to the Taoist deities (these are not real items, but represent the wealth that the departed bestows upon her ancestors to pave her way into heaven) that will later be burned on the roof of the building.

In front of her picture is a large brass bowl filled with sand in which the ceremonial joss sticks are placed when they have been ignited. Each mourner takes three sticks and lights them from an adjacent brazier, then bows to the image three times, yat guk gung, yi guk gung, saam guk gung, and plants the offering in the bowl before going to mingle with the other guests.

After shaking hands and exchanging hugs with the family I also follow suit and make my obeisance, trying hard to hold myself together as I look at the picture of my lovely girl. Maybe it’s my imagination but she seems to give me her special smile and the tears come unbidden to my eyes.

Her son takes me by the arm and ushers me into a back room, where she lies in state in her coffin. The mortuary’s technicians have done a wonderful job of making her beautiful, not that it ever needed much.

But this is not how I want to remember her. That still, expressionless beauty was not her. She was always full of life. I remember her giggling when I revealed that I was on the transgender scale, not maliciously, but perhaps with some surprise, and then insisting that we go through the pictures again of me dressed as I always wished to be and selecting those that she thought were best. She told me that I looked quite good for a gwai por (western woman). I had never revealed my inner self to anybody else but I didn’t want our relationship to be based on a lie.

She accepted me. I remember how my heart soared. I had taken the biggest chance of my life and been successful.

I remember her scolding me when I did something she didn’t like. It always made me laugh and she couldn’t keep a straight face either. It was proof that she loved me, otherwise she wouldn’t have bothered.

I remember her snuggling up to me in bed, hands and feet always cold. She called me her turkey that kept her warm.

I remember her ordering our favourite dishes in the restaurants. Somehow she always managed to dominate the waitstaff and get her way without being nasty. We were always welcomed.

I remember her unusual tastes for some non-Chinese foods, her love for lamb chops and kiwifruit, for traditional American Thanksgiving Dinners that we went to every year in one of MY favourite restaurants.

I remember her glee when watching her favourite movies, the “Fast And The Furious” series, with me laughing inside at this strange taste for a Chinese girl.

I remember her shopping. She was an absolute genius at picking out bargains and then shamelessly bartering for an even bigger discount. It often made me cringe, but agreement on a price was inevitably reached to the satisfaction of both parties.

I remember our kisses and the gentle touch of her hands.

I remember her ALIVE. The beautiful shell in the coffin wasn’t her. The light had gone out. Even during her last month I had hoped against hope that she would recover, but she had cried one day from her hospital bed that she wanted to die; the pain was too much to bear. A day later she died and my heart shattered.

There was a small room adjacent to allow the family some respite and relaxation, with a private toilet for comfort stops. I had to take the opportunity for some personal time to allow my tears to stop flowing and regain my composure before re-entering the main arena. The family did not interrupt me.

When I had control of my emotions again I went out and joined in with all her well-wishers, friends and acquaintances. Even though I had little appetite I partook of the tea and finger-food and chatted with those I knew.

Some time later her family shepherded me to the roof and all the ersatz gifts were consigned to the flames for her journey to heaven. That was a kind of signal for the ceremony to close for the night. It would resume in the morning.

I spent a restless night in our flat in Central wishing that this was an unwanted dream, but wishes were not horses. I got up in the morning and returned to Hung Hom on Kowloon side. Today it was just the family and me, although the priests still chanted and circled.

We all took a last look at her in the coffin and paraded it around the room three times with the establishment’s pallbearers transporting her to a blue and white hearse to take her to the final destination at Cape Collinson. We followed in a similarly coloured mini-bus.

At this final crematorium her casket was wheeled into a kind of ante-room with furnace doors at one end. Her portrait which had accompanied us was laid on the box and we all shouted her name as her body was consigned to the flames.

The morning was completed when we all exited the building, jumped over a small fire in the pathway and trailed a hand through a trough of water. Now she was just a memory.

No Cantonese event is complete without food and a dim sum lunch had been arranged at her favourite restaurant. I can’t remember what I ate.

They say that life goes on. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.