And as Another Solicitation...

I hadn't gone through the details of the actual funeral because, simply put, it wasn't that great. Let me take the time to explain it today...

First of all, there's this big chain of funeral homes called "Lepine Cloutier" in Quebec. My family is not very well informed about funeral arrangements, but fortunately we had friends around who would be able to help us. The chinese families in Quebec City used LC's services due to their respect for our traditions and such, and as my father was not Christian (rather, he wasn't anything I can think of), it seemed a good idea.

Well, it seems that once we choose the funeral home, the hospital then sends the body to their care. And then the home needs the family to choose the services and stuff. Usually, at these sad moments, the family is too grieved to think like an actual consumer. So the funeral homes tend to offer the most expensive, useless things to them, and they usually accept paying more than they should. So they make a ton of money.

But they haven't met the likes of my mum and sister. Together. Heh.

They went to pick the coffin and services. Knowing my dad, there would be no religious services, except for a relatively short thing with Mia for the burial. That was for my mum. My sister would make sure there wouldn't be too many religious things at the funeral.

When it comes to coffins, they show you the most expensive thing first. Sure it's pretty and all, but it's just a box really. My sister immediately said no to the first half dozen or so, until it came down to a very attractive bronze one. (For probably less than three quarters of the price of the first ones.) She told my dad it was the colour of money, so it was very nice, indeed.

Then it came to the flowers. (Hoo boy.) My mother was rather discouraged that the funeral would cost so much, but this was definitely a put-down. 300$ for a freaking bouquet to put on the coffin, and it would be completely white.

I think she snapped.

She wanted to have a dozen yellow roses. Apparently, the director didn't think there would be such opposition. They told her for a funeral at such "short" notice, it'd be hard to get that many yellow roses. How about champagne yellow?

"NO! I WANT YELLOW YELLOW!" In my mother's very familiar bartering/yelling voice.

Come the wake, there were seven dying "yellow yellow" roses in the giant bouquet of white flowers. We were all seething.

My sister and mother chose the plot on Mount Hermon. It is very peaceful, as cemeteries should be, but the view is, in fact, spectacular. It seems like a bargain to buy such plots in pairs and have "perpetual care" for 99 years. But then we have to contend with a monument, or a tombstone.

Either as a tie-in with their partners, the funeral homes, tombstone companies send their pamphlets like flies to our house. Some are really godawfully ugly. Nevertheless, it is necessary to get their help to engrave things on the stone, even though we have a stone from my brother's friend's father. I figure that we should get that tombstone done before fall.

And those things don't come cheap either.

The costs of all these things together, I figure... 12000 (services) + 2000 (plot) + 2000 (stone) = 16000$

Now, that's a good reason not to die. /morbid humour

The Wake

There's this really eerie feeling when you go to a funeral. Like it should be a whopping party or something, with so many people, but the guest of honour is lying there...

Anyway, what I meant to say is that the funeral was something I haven't ever experienced before. If I think about it too much, I start going numb. But I recall feeling something in between dread and loneliness, and half the time keeping tears to myself and half the time with Jorgh telling him not to freak out with my cousins and relatives. And all the other chinese people.

I mean, the entire chinese community in Quebec City came to this funeral. I have seriously seen few chinese congregations in Quebec with so many in attendance. The place was packed with so many asians that at the peak, they were spilling outside. And in chinese customs, those who are older than the deceased usually can't go to the funeral (I think) so there were many more who would have attended. Then again, we don't know how many people could have attended if we had let the funeral happen in the Quebecois traditional week's time.

A man perhaps less fortunate in life enriched so many even at death.

The body is prepared by the funeral home and placed in the coffin, and displayed during the wake. I have never seen someone dead before in person, and it is definitely much different than a televised thing. It's very cold and somewhat stiff. There's so much makeup on the body that you think they're on a Broadway show. And...

"Hey, he looks sorta weird."
"What?"
"Yeah, he's got this weird little smirk or something on his face. Daddy never smiled like that."
"Well, he's also not that colour either."
"It doesn't even look like him."
"I think it's because they trimmed all his nose hairs and ear hairs."

Okay, I heard that when they prepare the body, they block all the orifices in the face (at least). They somehow seal up the mouth and eyes so they don't open and... ugh...

Then later in the wake, my sister spotted something next to the bouquet on the coffin. My cousin looked and said, "It's probably something they're used to doing." My sister didn't like it at all. I mean, we were paying the home to *not* put religious icons, and this was their thanks?

"I don't think daddy wants to be stuck in the coffin with this thing."

She picked up the crucifix with Jesus on it and tried to hide it somewhere else, but we couldn't do it without people seeing. My mother told us to just leave it be. (?)

Just before they were about to close up the casket, my sister removed it and tried to stash it behind a drawer. It was too noticeable so my cousin picked it up and hid it in the next salon. Heh heh.

It's a big deal to be buried, isn't it?

We realized that we wanted to bury my father with a few items of his that he was hardly ever seen without in life, so we put in:

• a pair of reading glasses


• his Cross pen


• a copy of a 6/49 lotto ticket.

Not that the ticket won anything. I think there was only one number on it. But after the funeral, I realized I forgot his comb. I went down to his room and found five. Sheesh.

Yes, I know the afterlife isn't like taking a plane trip to Las Vegas, but I thought he wouldn't mind having a nice 'do.

The Service

We were all very emotional at the service. Especially when my brother played a violin solo for a good fifteen minutes. Very emotional.

And then my cousin gave a bilingual eulogy. English-chinese bilingual, that is. It was very concise and touching. Extremely emotional.

The Procession...

... Then Jorghnassen found out his bowels couldn't take it anymore, nor could it take an hour for a really slow car ride, and with our permission walked to the bus stop in the proximity. (He went back to Montreal.)

So this is the first time I had a limo ride. I think. And it was very hot. The limo driver definitely was not very accomodating to our "Help we're burning up back here turn on the A/C or help us open the windows dammit" screaming.

We (my siblings and I) learned a lot about chinese funeral traditions. I found them quite interesting:

1. Red is the colour of life, and white is the colour of death. So red is a big no-no during funerals and mourning. No red clothing for at least a month, although my mother said for some places it lasts a year or three.


2. As white is the colour of death, we give out white envelopes ("white gold") with money inside to anyone who comes by to visit the family. There's also a piece of candy that is included in the envelope, but we couldn't find envelopes big enough to fit both the dollar coin and the candy so we made a bunch of envelopes with white paper and a bit of origami.


3. The mourning period is a lot like other cultures - we're supposed to wear something symbolising our grief for a long period of time. My mother said that the children are supposed to wear some coloured flower in our hair. If it's a parent, the flower is white. The other colours I can't remember for whom.


4. For the procession, the body has to pass by home first (in this case, in front of the school), and then go to the final resting place.

For that last point, we had to lead the procession from Ste-Foy back to our home in Les Saules/Duberger, and then finally to Sillery. This meant that we have to travel by highway both ways, on the Henri IV first, and then through the Capitale, onto du Vallon.

There are a lot of irate and stupid drivers in Quebec City around 4 pm on Monday. Most of them SUV drivers. During the procession, one stupid motherf^#@er of a SUV tried to cut in between the limo and the *hearse*, driving on the shoulder of the highway and then speeding up to pass the directional car. And my cousins told us later that another car cut in front of them in the procession and pretty much f@$!ed over the line of 20 cars behind them because then they got lost along the way.

Anyway, we all know that average Quebec drivers are stupid.

---

I have a very special message for you, anonymous SUV driver from f#@$ing hell: next funeral procession you cut in, I hope you roll over on that shoulder and get crushed under your own truck's weight in a ditch, leaving you paralyzed on half of your body. And then live like that for the rest of your wretched puny life.

---

The Burial

It seems that LC hires the oldest, frailest men to work or something. We were imagining six well-built (or at least younger, fitter) men to be pallbearers, but we got these guys who almost seemed to keel over while they were lifting the coffin. Well, at least it's done.

LC also hired this old man to take care of the building during the wake, and all he does is stand around and smoke in a little room waiting for us to come and go. Apparently, he's also responsible for the cleaning of the washroom. My sister suggested we make it worth our while to hire this guy by messing up the washroom, like picking our noses or something (worse). I think that's how we got into a discussion about what happened one time while she was working at Second Cup, but I'm not sure.

But anyway, the thing about burials is that it doesn't hit until you see the box going down the hole. And as it slowly heads into its final resting place, it punches you like a boxer delivering vengeance. It's the feeling that the person who you've known for your entire life is gone forever, and the inevitability of your own fate (but not as much). As much as we kept our composure for so long, it really hurts to lose your father. And it still hurts.

So at the burial, Mia was delivering her last... uh, I would say "line" but it doesn't seem polite... prayer, she asked that we all throw in some dirt. The groundskeeper was standing by, having just dug the hole earlier that afternoon, and seemed at a loss for dirt. In fact, the pile next to the grave was all *rocks* so he had to get some dirt from the next grave over (from the Wong plot) to give to Mia to throw. So in the end, the only other person who threw in dirt was my brother, and he got the dirt from the same place. Sheesh.

Then after the service was over, the chinese congregation started staring at the Wong plot and commenting on the monument and plants. Helen Wong had lost her husband a year ago and had him buried at this spot, which is why my mother chose the spot next to his to bury my father. (It seems that they're the only two chinese people buried at this cemetery. Maybe I should check.) There were four plastic bunches of roses nestled in the ground in front of the monument, while there was no actual greenery in front of it. If you ever see television graves supposedly made within a year, they always appear green and lush with grass. So don't believe anything you see on television.

The Reception

We had a buffet reception at Thomas Tam, on Hamel. This was when I felt most awkward and lonely after my father passed away. Jorgh was gone to Montreal, my friends hardly knew what was happening, although Julie and Guillaume came to visit me at the funeral, and my siblings' friends came to visit them. His friends were all people I've hardly ever heard of, while my sister's friends were more spoken of. (Well, in particular, Anne-Marie Withenshaw is one of my sister's old friends from cegep.)

In the meantime, I spoke to my brother's friends, while he seemed particularly annoyed that I was taking room at his table. Then I moved to let his friends sit together, and sat with my sister's friends, who were busy eating as much as possible. Especially Galit, or "Gidgit" (Rebecca was convinced that was her name up to this point). Simon K. was also there, and somehow let out that he was up to his eyeballs in debt... but it's not supposed to get out, so it'll be between you and me, ok reader? :p

But I still felt left out, despite everyone's good intentions. I did receive a bouquet from my friends in Montreal a few days later, which was quite thoughtful and kind of them, but I still had feelings of resentment because of this day. It was mightily hard to tell people what happened, two months ago, but it's even harder to tell them how I'm really feeling. Maybe because I have no idea what I'm feeling.

Stop Whining Already and Get to the Point!

Well, today I am in Quebec again, and we just got a piece of mail from LC. I think I'll just let the scan of their letter tell the story.

EDIT: The link doesn't work yet.