Met Mr. Liu at the funeral home and he gave me the prayer beads and the prayer book in the morning. We sat and talked for a while. He likes to talk about the spiritual stuff and I like to know more about the Chinese traditions anyway. It’s too bad that I can’t pray for mom in the hotel. Maybe when I get back home I can send more prayers to her.
Spent the afternoon at S’s shop and later she and big Ben took me to dinner and dropped me off at the funeral home for the 1st 7th day ritual. I was there a bit early and sat for a while. Mr. Liu showed up and we still waited a bit for the prayer hall to be setup and the ritual master showed up and took mom’s name plate to the hall. We were just about to begin, Nikon and the older cousin showed up. I was telling the master’s helper mom’s birth and dead time and names when he called me over and told me to write up an article about mom so he can put it in the monthly club publications he edited for the people from dad’s birth place. The master’s helper called me back to complete the paper they prepare for the ritual. The cousin is still talking to me about that article. I told him I haven’t written chinese for 30+ years and I don’t really know how mom and dad met and what happened in the 30 years I was away. He insisted that I should write it for the funeral too.
We ended our talk as the master signaled that we should begin the ritual. He burned one incense for mom and left saying that his daughter in law just had a son around dinner time. Not that he needs to go back to take care her or anything, just an excuse to leave. He only showed up for 15 minutes and demanded to talk regardless of the real purpose of the gathering and left before it started.
Afterwards, Mr. Liu asked if we can skip that article for the funeral as the ceremony master has to write it down with the Chinese brush pen for the ceremony. It’s going to add a lot more complications. So the older cousin was using the funeral as an excuse to ask me to write an article for his publication. I don’t think I want to and I don’t think I will.
The ceremony lasted about 2 hours and ended just after 11pm. In the Chinese time measurement, it’s the next day after 11pm. So this ceremony covered both the 1st and the 2nd 7th day ritual. We then burned some paper money for mom and Nikon and his wife took me home. I got back to the hotel around midnight and they must have got home around 12:30. Nikon’s son and one of his daughters also came and stayed for the first half of the ritual. So we had more people behind the master as she say the prayers instead of just me. I can’t be more thankful for their help.
I was very tired and went to sleep right away.