Final farewell

Dad would have loved the Formosan Lilies. How beautiful they were, how fragile, yet at the same time so fancy and fragrant. Pure white, with a blush of pink and red. The flower, being the unofficial national flower associated with qualities of purity, grace, vitality and courage that embody the Aboriginal Peoples of Taiwan, is often used to adorn funeral halls. Perhaps these are the very qualities that the family members need to carry on life after death.

The lilies surrounded dad’s portrait. Serene, and magnificent. My mind was against awash with a strange sense of calmness, the same kind of calmness I experienced as dad’s life slipped away in my hands. Dad’s smile felt so warming, and so close to heart. I stood there silently for a moment, and admired the flowers. Some lilies were already open, radiating a pleasant scent throughout the room, while others have yet to blossom. Whatever state the bud is in, one thing is certain: all will one day bloom, take on its natural beauty, but will also eventually wilt and perish. That is the nature of all life.

Aptly named bai3he2 (百合), the literal translation of the Mandarin term for lily is “perpetual union”. For perhaps it is true that death does strangely bring people together. Relatives and friends gathered in the hall well before the official ceremony began at 11 in the morning. Relatives and friends slowly drifted into the small hall. I nodded to them with a faint smile and bowed gently with my hands together before my chest as a gesture of respect and gratitude for their coming.

Many had ventured from hundreds of kilometres away to bid dad farewell. An aunt, the youngest sister of my dad, flew all the way from the States just to attend the final ceremony. Solemn were their faces, moist their eyes and noses from personal memories and mourning of a quiet beloved man who gave much but asked little in return.

Much bowing, prostrating, kowtowing followed, all in accordance with age-old traditions. Not only

my brother and I must show to pay respects to dad and show him filial piety, also the attending relatives and friends must bow before dad and offer him food and flowers. As dad’s sons, our role in the whole ceremony is more elaborate, for we must show deep reverence towards him, and bow before him various times at various intervals. Personally, it seemed more like an overtly and carefully choreographed public display of how filial and virtuous as sons we were, when actually real respect and real gratitude comes from deep inside.

In a private reception with dad, I saw him lying in the coffin. Most of his body were covered with a yellow cloth bearing the markings of Buddhist prayers written in Sanskrit. But I could see the black suit, red tie, and white shirt with pale thin vertical stripes that we had carefully chosen out for him to wear on this final leg of his journey in this world. By his feet, lay four sets of clothing, which as tradition dictates, is meant for each season of the year.

Dad’s eyes were closed, but his mouth was still half open from the moment when he passed away in the hospital, when he was wearing a respirator mask. His eyebrows were thick, as I remember them, yet there were little hairlets that were clinging onto his cheeks, which were perhaps left there in the haste to make dad still cosmetically viewable after almost an entire month in the freezer.

Before seeing him, I thought seeing dad again would trigger me to burst into tears and howl at his side. But seeing dad again I did not feel frightened, neither did at all I feel pain from sadness. Instead, I knelt down next to him, and spoke to him in silence…

I wished him happiness, good health, and most of all, peace forever after. Silently I told him to take good care of himself, and thanked him again, as I have done many times before, for all he has given me, and more. I pressed my fingers against my lips, and placed my fingers on dad’s forehead to ‘kiss’ him goodbye. My fingers felt ice, ice cold, and my touch smudged the thick make up a little. The heavy breathing in that hospital ward, the beeping of dad’s heart as monitored by a machine were distant memories.

In the background, a small orchestra played traditional Taiwanese flutes to the tunes of one of my favourite songs. The lyrics carry the ageless written wisdom of a poet in the Sung Dynast, over a thousand years ago. The words that most suits dad’s final farewell are beautifully captured in the verse:

People have their griefs and joys, their togetherness and separation,
The moon has its dark and clear times, its waxings and wanings.
Situations are never ideal since long ago.
I only hope we two may have long long lives,
So that we may share the moon's beauty even though we are a thousand miles apart.

Though we are now more than merely a thousand miles apart, deep down inside, I know that many parts of dad and me are still intricately intertwined and bound together. In the final letter that I wrote dad, and in the dozens of old pictures that accompanied dad’s coffin into the cremation furnace are countless memories of words and places, emotions and hugs that dad and I shared together. Priceless memories can never be burnt, nor turned into ash.

Into the furnace dad went. Then it dawned upon me… I would never be able to gaze upon dad’s face ever again, at least not in real life… this was the final and ultimate moment of farewell, as the steel forks lifted dad’s coffin into the furnace and the doors slowly shut.

Out of the furnace dad came. An hour later. Ash and bones. Bones, broken and evenly smashed by machines. Bones, some slightly dyed green and orange, remnants of the medicine that were injected into dad’s body during his first and last chemo-therapy. Brother and I picked at the bones, and placed them into the marble urn we had chosen.

The lid was closed and sealed.

Farewell…farewell, dear dad!