Observing (again)
Attending a funeral first thing on a sunny summer morning is an odd break in routine. The oddness just seems compounded because I didn't actually know the deceased, a clothing designer who lived in NY, but rather her Ithaca relatives, an extensive immigrant family who run Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants in town. Or more precisely, I am actually really close friends with this family's close friends and, while I have often hung out with younger members of the family, I am merely a nodding acquaintance for most relatives of the same generation as the deceased. This makes my presence at the funeral slightly idiosyncratic, but I'm used to being a slightly odd and perhaps unexpected observer at ceremonies (perhaps a little too accustomed to such situations) - as I will explain.
I walked to Bang's Funeral Home supposedly to meet up with a funeral convoy to head to a cemetery for a graveside ceremony. Of course, my information was not the most updated, so once at the funeral home and having met up with my former neighbors, I was informed that the newest plan was to meet at the cemetery. So, with a few wrong turns, we got to the ceremony at 8:40, ten minutes after we had been told to be there only to be welcomed as the first attendees by the funeral home professionals who informed us that we were 20 minutes early. Ah well.
Some time later, many cars full of somber family members arrived dressed almost entirely in black. My former neighbor, Jen mentioned that she had worn white to a previous funeral thinking that they would follow the common Chinese custom, but had felt out of place because the family had shown up wearing the mainstream USA Christian uniform of black. This time Jen had worn black and white to be better prepared, as had I. Sartorially at least, we blended in.
Other than the funeral professionals and the pastor (who could perhaps be included among the funeral professionals) my former neighbors and I appeared to be the only non-family present. Perhaps other connections were waiting for the memorial service at the church later. Not that we were made to feel awkward or unwelcome; we were specifically greeted and hugged by the deceased's dignified and weeping mother who held onto my friend Jen for a while almost as a prop for standing. Most of her children also came by to say hello as well as two or three members of the younger grandchild set. These greetings took some time. There were at least 10 children in the same generation as the deceased, most of whom were apparently at the gravesite as well as many spouses and a large number of their children - most of whom were under thirty. Not to mention uncles, aunts and cousins. Since we were apparently the only non-Chinese, non-family visitors, however, most of the family was able to concentrate on other affairs.
Family members placed flowers in front of the casket along with the deceased's photograph - although it kept slipping down off the thin edge that it was placed on. Incense and paper money were burned in front of the altar and rice, wine, and fruit were placed in front as offerings. This funeral, unfortunately, was not the only one to occur in the last year and the family also burned incense at the grave sites of other recent dead whose graves surrounded this newest site. And then, eventually the family, at the direction of the pastor, assembled around the casket under the awning placed for shade. Mike accompanied one of the younger family members closer in for moral support; this younger member was not particularly comforted by either the ancestor rituals or the Christian ceremony and appreciated the presence of a fellow non-believer at her side. Jen and I stood at the edges of the gathering farther away and under the sun to listen to the pastor.
The pastor's words, conventionally Lutheran, strictly biblical, and appropriate to the situation were, with a few exceptions as when he mentioned that the deceased had kept up her church membership despite her residence downstate, oddly anonymous and abstract. Hopefully a more personal memorialization was prepared for the church service later. As Jen, explained, however, while some of the members did not truly care for or practice Lutheran Christianity, most of them maintained a connection to the church since it was the sponsoring organization for their immigration to the USA from Vietnam years ago. The resurrection may not do much for them but the Lutheran community had. After the pastor was done speaking and the casket had been lowered, siblings who had yet to burn spirit money, finished doing so and people started breaking off into smaller groups. For the first time, I noticed that the spirit money involved included both the more familiar (to me) gold tinted version and a version that was a mock up of the US 100 dollar bill. Yet another example of how the ceremony was an expression of how the family mixed older and newer forms in this ceremony.
But I'm not writing this entry to illustrate the grieving customs of an American family, but rather to indicate my almost unconscious and accustomed peripheral observatory position. I am nearly incapable of refraining from this sort of automatic detailing and reflection. It's a little eerie. So, actually, attending a funeral first thing on a sunny summer morning was not a break in routine at all - at least positionally and epistemologically. I have become overly used to being the slightly idiosyncratic observer; it's my default mode of behavior - a mode which only becomes heightened when many of those involved are Chinese and are engaging in practices that I study professionally, in Ithaca as well as the PRC. This is a double ethical problem; 1) at first, it appears almost discriminatory but then 2) results in a slippery slope that views everyone as informants or potential fodder for my career - in addition to placing myself in a fallaciously and perniciously "outside" position to what's happening and how I am involved in it. Something to worry about - especially if I'm going to live in my fieldsite.
I walked to Bang's Funeral Home supposedly to meet up with a funeral convoy to head to a cemetery for a graveside ceremony. Of course, my information was not the most updated, so once at the funeral home and having met up with my former neighbors, I was informed that the newest plan was to meet at the cemetery. So, with a few wrong turns, we got to the ceremony at 8:40, ten minutes after we had been told to be there only to be welcomed as the first attendees by the funeral home professionals who informed us that we were 20 minutes early. Ah well.
Some time later, many cars full of somber family members arrived dressed almost entirely in black. My former neighbor, Jen mentioned that she had worn white to a previous funeral thinking that they would follow the common Chinese custom, but had felt out of place because the family had shown up wearing the mainstream USA Christian uniform of black. This time Jen had worn black and white to be better prepared, as had I. Sartorially at least, we blended in.
Other than the funeral professionals and the pastor (who could perhaps be included among the funeral professionals) my former neighbors and I appeared to be the only non-family present. Perhaps other connections were waiting for the memorial service at the church later. Not that we were made to feel awkward or unwelcome; we were specifically greeted and hugged by the deceased's dignified and weeping mother who held onto my friend Jen for a while almost as a prop for standing. Most of her children also came by to say hello as well as two or three members of the younger grandchild set. These greetings took some time. There were at least 10 children in the same generation as the deceased, most of whom were apparently at the gravesite as well as many spouses and a large number of their children - most of whom were under thirty. Not to mention uncles, aunts and cousins. Since we were apparently the only non-Chinese, non-family visitors, however, most of the family was able to concentrate on other affairs.
Family members placed flowers in front of the casket along with the deceased's photograph - although it kept slipping down off the thin edge that it was placed on. Incense and paper money were burned in front of the altar and rice, wine, and fruit were placed in front as offerings. This funeral, unfortunately, was not the only one to occur in the last year and the family also burned incense at the grave sites of other recent dead whose graves surrounded this newest site. And then, eventually the family, at the direction of the pastor, assembled around the casket under the awning placed for shade. Mike accompanied one of the younger family members closer in for moral support; this younger member was not particularly comforted by either the ancestor rituals or the Christian ceremony and appreciated the presence of a fellow non-believer at her side. Jen and I stood at the edges of the gathering farther away and under the sun to listen to the pastor.
The pastor's words, conventionally Lutheran, strictly biblical, and appropriate to the situation were, with a few exceptions as when he mentioned that the deceased had kept up her church membership despite her residence downstate, oddly anonymous and abstract. Hopefully a more personal memorialization was prepared for the church service later. As Jen, explained, however, while some of the members did not truly care for or practice Lutheran Christianity, most of them maintained a connection to the church since it was the sponsoring organization for their immigration to the USA from Vietnam years ago. The resurrection may not do much for them but the Lutheran community had. After the pastor was done speaking and the casket had been lowered, siblings who had yet to burn spirit money, finished doing so and people started breaking off into smaller groups. For the first time, I noticed that the spirit money involved included both the more familiar (to me) gold tinted version and a version that was a mock up of the US 100 dollar bill. Yet another example of how the ceremony was an expression of how the family mixed older and newer forms in this ceremony.
But I'm not writing this entry to illustrate the grieving customs of an American family, but rather to indicate my almost unconscious and accustomed peripheral observatory position. I am nearly incapable of refraining from this sort of automatic detailing and reflection. It's a little eerie. So, actually, attending a funeral first thing on a sunny summer morning was not a break in routine at all - at least positionally and epistemologically. I have become overly used to being the slightly idiosyncratic observer; it's my default mode of behavior - a mode which only becomes heightened when many of those involved are Chinese and are engaging in practices that I study professionally, in Ithaca as well as the PRC. This is a double ethical problem; 1) at first, it appears almost discriminatory but then 2) results in a slippery slope that views everyone as informants or potential fodder for my career - in addition to placing myself in a fallaciously and perniciously "outside" position to what's happening and how I am involved in it. Something to worry about - especially if I'm going to live in my fieldsite.