There’s an ongoing exhibition in our National Museum about coffins, both
traditional and modern from all cultures and religion. Also, recently there
was one episode on TV about the making of coffins. People’s thinking
and beliefs have changed nowadays to openly embrace the subject of
death, funerals and coffins. People during my younger days would have
said ‘choy, pak mo kum gei’ whenever any of the above was mentioned,
something like ‘touch wood.’ Going to a museum to see coffins would
have been stupid, bad luck and only for the insane in those days. For
them, you only see coffin when someone passed away. Likewise, I
myself too would have felt uncomfortable seeing coffins for they
somehow brought back memories of funerals in those bygone days.
My paternal grandfather passed away when I was 8years old but
memories of his funeral was still quite vivid in my mind. He passed away
in our village house and being the only two stand-alone houses or what
you would call bungalow nowadays, in the village, we had nearly the
whole village attending his wake for there was lots of space for everyone.
On the day he passed away, he was dressed in the traditional Qing
dynasty clothes complete with the shoes and placed on a canvas bed in
the hall with his legs facing the door. His face was covered with joss
paper and a mound of grass was placed on his abdomen. To an 8years old,
this was really scary and it reminded me of ‘keong see’ which you would
see in Chinese movies. I never entered the hall for the whole 5 days of his
wake. When the coffin arrived I was terrified for somehow the traditional
Chinese coffin was ugly, scary and menacing to me. We all had to adjourn
to the back of the house or somewhere to avoid watching the deceased
being placed into the coffin, it would be bad chi if you did.
Going to the toilet at night during these times would be agony for me.
Being a stand-alone house, the surroundings were all planted with fruit
trees and dark at night. Everything was free-range here and there were
no gates or fence and anything could come and go as they like. To make
things more scarier, our kitchen and bathroom were all situated outside
the house. You had to walk a short distance to get to them and it was
sheer terror for me during these times to go to the bathroom and going
to the outhouses which was further away would be insane for me. What
if a ‘keong see’ was lurking behind the trees and with my grandfather in
his Qing era garb lying in the hall I was terrified. But I secretly and
discreetly borrowed my younger brother’s potty during those times, after
all I was only 8 years old then!
One thing which I would always associate with being a harbinger of death is
a bird which only comes out at night usually after 9pm. Even up till now I
have never seen its true form or how it looks like. I first heard its calling
which sounded like ‘toong,toong, toong’ during my grandfather’s wake and I
thought it sounded creepy. But I heard it again when my maternal
grandfather passed away and subsequently at both my maternal and
paternal grandmother’s funeral. Each time someone passed away I would hear
this bird calling. But the most sorrowful time was when my second brother
passed away in hospital in KL. Coming back to my house after seeing him for
the last time I heard this bird calling again in the distance. It evoked an
extreme sense of sadness, sorrow and creepyness which I had never felt since
I last heard it at my grandmother’s wake decades ago.
Chinese funerals are always noisy business and in those days the Taoist
monks during my grandfather’s wake could do their chanting until 3am
in the morning. Nowadays all chanting stops at 12midnight. On the day
of his burial the village’s drum ensemble was out in full force noisily
sending my grandfather off to the cemetry. As a kid then, I was dazed
by all this circus of rituals and noises and really wished it would not
end. For when everything was over, it would be back to a quieter
life and that would be scary with my imagination going wild again.
Death is inevitable, but life should be enjoyable. All these memories I shall
keep under lock and key in the deeper boxes of my memory bank and go
on to happier memories in the future.
A traditional Chinese coffin.
