A Funeral

A Funeral

December 2013

This post is a lightly edited version of what I wrote immediately after the funeral of a boy from our school. I hesitated before deciding to publish it in order to gain a little distance from the emotions of the event.  As always, I want to emphasize that my intent is only to describe what I see and experience, not to judge it.

The funeral was on a Monday afternoon.  A 9^th grade boy had died in a motorcycle accident the Friday before. Someone told me that he ran into a cow or bull. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. I didn’t have him as a student, but recognized him when I saw his picture at the funeral.

It was a chilly rainy day, the roads were muddy. A fellow-teacher drove us out to the home of the boy’s family, a mile or two from the school.  A coffin-like box, only taller than coffins we are used to in the US, was inside the house, with paper flower wreaths and also real flowers around it and on top.  We took off our shoes and knee-walked toward the coffin where there were incense sticks for us to light. There were pictures of the boy on easels nearby, and there was a “tree” for people to hang money on.  Doing a little research later, I learned that it is customary in Buddhist funeral practices to have the body of the deceased person on display for three, five, or seven days before cremation. This would have been the third day.

Soon after we arrived, the coffin was loaded onto a pickup truck to be taken to the site where the cremations take place. Someone holding a green string attached to the coffin walked ahead of the pickup truck – when I asked why, my colleague said that the string would lead the boy’s spirit to where it needed to go. The mourners followed the pickup truck to a site about a half-mile down the road, just past the entrance to a nearby wat.  Quite a few people were already there, gathered under the shelter you see below or standing around it with umbrellas. 

 The coffin was under a canopy in a clearing, facing the shelter. There was cloth festooned over the coffin, and a frame of very light wood or bamboo. Flowers were piled over the coffin and around the funeral pyre made of logs. Several men were chopping coconuts open and pouring the water off into plastic bottles. Students walked through the crowd carrying trays with glasses of water and soft drinks, but not many people wanted any.

After a while there were some speeches – I couldn’t see who was speaking and didn’t understand everything that was said, but could hear the words for teachers, students, school, and so on – of course, most everyone from our school was there, especially students and teachers from the grades that were closest to the boy in age. The school band played a piece I didn’t recognize. After the speeches were finished, a monk chanted for what must have been about 20 minutes, followed by a round of chanting interspersed with responses from the mourners, a sequence that was repeated a couple of times. After that, all attention turned to the coffin, which was on a structure of logs in the clearing pictured below.

Someone carried the flower wreaths away from the coffin, the canopy was carried off to one side, and the decorated part of the coffin itself was taken away – presumably to be used again by someone else. A table was set up near the coffin with little homemade paper flowers for everyone to take and put next to the body. When I took one, I saw that the flowers were made of paper that documents had been printed on, or that someone had written and drawn pictures on. I thought about the boy’s family and friends making the flowers with whatever paper they happened to have, so as to be ready in time for the ritual.

Everyone lined up to walk to the coffin, lay one of the flowers beside it, and pour a little coconut water over the boy.  So that’s what the coconuts were for. He lay there looking very natural, as if he were asleep. I didn’t ask what his fatal injuries were. One of our students just ahead of me, carrying his saxophone, was crying – I felt so sorry for him to have lost his friend.  After we walked back through the mud, my two colleagues poured water over each other’s hands, and mine, the water blessing.

Then the structure the boy was lying in was dismantled (made of cloth and light wood), and logs were piled all around and over him, like a little house. The light wood pieces were tossed on top.  Men poured something on the logs (probably gasoline, I was too far away to smell it) and the fire was started.  I stood there crying, wondering how his parents could possibly stand it. Then I remembered hearing Thai people who had recently had a death in their family say something like: “Yesterday I sent my dear [name of relative] to heaven” – that is, the cremation is a positive event, because it carries the deceased person’s spirit up to heaven.

When we walked back out to the car, the boy’s mother and sister were standing in the driveway holding his picture and thanking people for coming.  I was introduced to them and, of course, someone took our picture. 

Except for the monks (five of them) and the person who picked up the flower wreaths and the decorative part of the coffin, the funeral seemed to be a community effort. The men loading the coffin onto the pickup truck and off again, the students carrying trays of soft drinks, the men opening the coconuts, carrying the logs and lighting them – these were not funeral parlor professionals, but ordinary people helping their bereaved friends. Later, they would also collect the ashes and clear the site to make it ready for the next cremation. Another example of the collectivist aspect of Thai culture.

From reading about Thai funeral practices, I learned that wats in cities and towns often have crematoria, and the rituals may be more elaborate. However, the practices described above are quite typical of funerals in rural communities in northeastern Thailand.