Today was truly exhausting, but I think it went okay. Evidence of this exist in anecdotes told by my husband's extended family and the fact that my in-laws thanked me (assumably for trying to participate while also trying to keep Julia in line, but more on this later) when they drove me home and my husband went off to finish up whatever needed to be finished.
Julia was disruptive/adventurous basically the whole time, but she really enjoyed the flowers.
Japanese funerals are a bit different from their western counterparts, but strangely enough, even in a society where social norms are dictated with such force that a lot of things appear practically cookie-cutter style, the funeral is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all option.
Of course, the religion of the deceased is taken into account, and most people in Japan fall into the Buddhist-Shinto combination so a lot of funerals are similar in many ways. My husband generally tells me any time there is a Christian funeral of any kind, more out of idle curiosity than anything else. They are rare, and we usually have to have this huge lecture on the many versions of that religion, and how they are different, and what they mean. They are rare here, Christians and their funerals, but Tomo's eldest aunt is apparently a Christian of some kind, so who knows? I mean, I didn't know (or judge. I really don't care what people believe most of the time...)
Grandma, as it turns out, was not religious, so we had no monks, no priests. No stuffy pontifications. Instead, her family and friends gathered, her son read a short speech, shared a DVD of pictures from her life, and her friends read letters aloud.
We missed most of this as Julia seems to think any quiet moment is the perfect time to scream or sing or run ton the front of the room and bellow.
So we waited in the hall for her to calm down and tried to come back into the ceremony hall, where we then waited for about five minutes to run back out again.
That in essence was my morning, which is why I don't know more about the letters. Were they from her life or written to her by the reader? Or were they from people who couldn't make it, guests who didn't get to come and say goodbye in person? I just don't know, though odds are even if I did have the chance to hang around, I would probably have misinterpreted the lot of them.
I heard the tears from the crowd though, even from outside in the hallway. Emotions flowed, as they should at times like this. My father- in-law was teary. I never noticed before today how much deeper his voice is comparing to his son's.
After the letters came flowers. First, everyone is given a long-stemmed white carnation to bring to the front, place in a pile on a stone slab, and pause to reflect on the deceased, who is at this time in the room, face visible through through a see-through panel in the lid of the casket, which is wood covered in pink brocade, strangely gorgeous.
You might be asking yourself why there is fabric around the outside of the casket, and from a western perspective, this is a good question and something I don't think a lot of Japanese people would recognize as weird.
This is not a coffin that will ever see dirt. It will be taken to the crematorium and burned in its entirety. They can put cloth wherever they want. It's not like it'll have much of a chance to get stained before it disintegrates.
After the white carnations, more things are said and done, that I also missed due to toddler-rage. When we returned, the lid of the coffin was off, and the name of the game was surrounding the deceased in flowers.
Nothing wrong with that, I think, with my American mind. Totally makes sense to me actually, and so much better than stupid non-biodegradable objects, because this isn't going to be a burial. Surround her with the beauty of life. Let it go with her.
They did her make-up and hair well. She looked genuinely at peace. It was actually quite lovely.
Julia really got into this flower bit, picking the perfect place to put small handfuls of pink roses and purple carnations. My husband handed me a purple-edged white rose and I picked up an orchid to accompany it and placed them in any spare area around her upper body that looked a little bare.
In a casket almost overflowing with flora, she looked very well loved.
After this, the pink box was sealed, the see-through panel shuttered, and the procession headed out toward the waiting hearse (which my husband dutifully drove) and shuttle-bus (for people who didn't fit into the hearse, like us and my mother-in-law) which took us to the crematorium.
At the crematorium, we said our final goodbyes to her physical form as we knew it and I kind of missed out for my screaming daughter, but I tried to do whatever the right thing looked like at the time. Julia and I ran around outside for a bit, and then inside for a bit and back and forth and man, I was worn out. We sat down to a lunch of sushi I could actually eat, which was exciting and made my mother-in-law proud of me. Julia ate veggie-chips and then ran around a bunch more. At one point she almost interrupted another family's last goodbyes and had to be headed off by both my mother-in-law and myself, simultaneously.
It is interesting to note that at full gallop, I can only just match my tiny mother-in-law in full kimono.
I don't know how she wore all of that without sweating. I mean, I was sweating like a small cow by the end of the day, and mine was just lined polyester.
There was a significant amount of me running after Julia, who was anxious to find trouble, but it wasn't all bad. All of my father-in-law's relatives made note of the fact that he was exactly the same as a child, and that they had watched the deceased do exactly as I was doing more times than anyone remembers.
Somehow, that makes it all fit.
After the burning comes bone collection, in which every family member picks through the remnant ash for any big, white chunks of bone and using one of several pairs of long, thick chopsticks, retrieves the charred marrow. I watched the older woman who I believe was the deceased's sister, lifting a chunk of what I think was hip-bone with one pair of chopsticks while her daughter helped by picking up the same piece with another pair. Together, they guided it into a large ceramic box.
And then Julia was screaming and we had to go outside again. Presumably
Eventually, we all departed, though this time the toddler of destruction and I got to ride in the comfort of my husband's car all the way out to our family grave, in a nice, comfortable cemetery north of Sendai.
My daughter and I slept on the way. Upon arrival, we ran out to change a diaper and then made our way to the family grave. Once the whole family was gathered, the cylindrical ceramic container was guided into place, behind a usually-closed hatch, beside an identical container, the final resting place of her husband.
Together, again, at last.
What I learned about her today was that she was from Shiogama, just like her husband. They were neighbors, with similar names. His was like mine, and what hers would become. Hers was one sound off, one of the most common names in Japan. Suzuki, she was, but Tsuzuki she died.
And now I do believe she is at peace.
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