Letter to ancestors

I went into the store and was embarrassed to ask for what I wanted. "A pack of Marlboro Light..."
I was embarrassed to be associated with the terrible stigma (at least according to me...) of "smoker". I actually wanted to tell the convenience store kid "It's not for me!" But probably the guy will think of me strange. Wouldn't you when someone comes to buy a pack of cigarettes at eleven in the evening and say it's not for him?

It really wasn't for me, but for my ancestors and for my dad. In around two weeks is Tombsweeping Festival, the day when we commemorate the deceased (there are a number of these days throughout the lunar calendar...). As we want to beat the crowds (it gets really crazy and crowded...), I asked my sister-in-law to come up with my nephew, and tomorrow we'll go to dad's resting place early in the morning. My aunt helped to buy a lot of prepared dishes, so all I have to do is cook some rice and pack everything in the morning, and I'd be ready to leave.

Besides the packet of cigarettes (really, not for me!!), I included a letter I handwrote. A letter to my ancestors and dad asking for their forgiveness that mum cannot be there again (she could not be there on Lunar New Year's Eve, because she just left the hospital) as she is now in hospital again. I'm sure they would not mind, but still I wanted to write to them and tell them that from now on, mum probably cannot prepare elaborate feasts and offerings on special occasions. She is simply too frail and too ill to get up and have to cook and travel an hour and a half away and perform a whole ceremony of offerings. In my letter, I wrote as long as I live, I will take over the task of making offerings, and I promise to do that at least twice a year, wherever I may be. (In fact, I have been doing that for the last two years, so I hope my ancestors will be used to my cooking!)

In my letter I also asked for the ancestors' protection, something I will again pray for tomorrow when I am standing before the ancestral plaque. "Take care of mum, may her remaining days be happy and free from bodily and mental pains... And if she should go, dad please guide her and allow her to steadily, steadily leave this world..."

How desperate I have become... But at a time when there is nothing else to cling onto, when all hope and prayer to some supreme force in the universe seem senseless, traditions and prayers to those long gone are all I have.