A Stone for a Tombstone
The day after resurrection Sunday this year happens to be Ching Ming, the day in the Chinese calendar to pay respect to ancestors.
My family and my uncle and aunt went to Pok Fu Lum cemetary together. We hiked up and down the hill to bring flowers to my grandparents and my mother.
Cemetaries in America are peaceful. A Chinese graveyard is not the same. The erect tombstones with the pictures of the deceased make it eerie. The gloomy weather during Ching Ming season adds to its mystery.
It reminds me of a haunting Chinese poem I learned in high school:
"Who knows who is a sage or a fool in a thousand years.
In front of you they are all buried on the same hill"
On the way back, we talked about how we wanted to be buried. We all preferred cremation and had the ashes returned to the ocean or the earth.
A friend has told me, she heard of using high temperature to turn the remaining elements of a human body into a precious stone.
I know this is what I want: closed casket, then turn the body into a precious stone.
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