“Nǎinai* is gone! I am taking care of some funeral arrangements.”
The text from my dad announcing his mother’s death casually popped up on my screen while I was in the middle of putting on a clean set of short leggings for a trip to a rock climbing gym.
It was just another normal Wednesday evening in Eagle Rock. Golden beams that escaped through the strips of my window blinds were just beginning to retreat. Darkness was bleeding through the violet LA sky as features of the scattered houses on the anonymous hill outside my other window were gradually wiped out, leaving spots of twinkling lights behind.
As I stood next to my bed with the shorts half way up my legs, the words spiraled in my brain for another minute or so and finally began to sink in. It felt like things came to an indefinite pause — my exhaustion from working and studying during the day, my anticipation and excitement for the carefully-curated walls of artificial rocks, my consciousness and sanity that dragged me through living a life in this foreign country.
I didn’t have a close relationship with Nǎinai. Unlike many only-children in China who grew up with their grandparents, my mom hired a nanny to take care of me.
The most prominent memory I have of Nǎinai is that she lived an extremely frugal life. Convincing her to turn on the heater during Shanghai’s brutally cold and humid winter was always an impossible task. Under her command, my 95-year-old Yéyé** would slowly crawl to the back of the electronically powered machine and unplug it. Then, to keep warm, they wrapped themselves up in many layers of clothing — some of which they recycled from my old school uniforms — and a blanket after they finally managed to sit on the couch. In contrast to her prudent lifestyle, Nǎinai’s gesture of love was shoving me cash wrapped in a plastic bag that she saved from a random grocery errand.
When it was time to leave for college in the United States, Nǎinai’s gestures became more desperate — it had gotten to the point where all layers of wrappings were discarded, and I was presented with a naked stack of cash pulled straight out of her green patchwork tote. I never understood the urgency behind this. I did not bother to ask her either, probably because I was the sole beneficiary of this absurd, yet harmless act. Almost punitively, Nǎinai took her answers with her as I read her obituary via text.
Although the text came with an exclamation mark, it felt abnormally calm, even indifferent. It felt like reading one of those “Breaking News” push notifications from the New York Times — a shocking event gets unraveled in front of your eyes, out of the blue, with one or two concise and carefully structured sentences. The information embedded in the text might be of importance, but unlike a “shooting” alert where you have to act instantaneously, nothing was expected from me.
Words felt cold from the text, not because of its function in declaring Nǎinai’s death, but because it confirmed how disconnected I am from my family in China. I am at the age where the elderly members in my family are inevitably beginning to pass. First it was my great grandmother, my Ātài; then my grandmother on my mother’s side, my Wàipó; and most recently, Nǎinai.
They all departed suddenly, and I was never there when they left.
The chaos and sorrow made up of fragmented pieces of information were always compressed into texts and sent slightly delayed. During this time, my parents had already paid the funeral home multiple visits, purchased cremation urns, booked restaurants for family gatherings after the funerals and processed the deaths on their own. By the time I received the text, everything was already arranged and thought through with the underlying assumption that none of them should be of concern to me. Life moves on from there.
It finally struck me that I’ve never attended a funeral. All I’ve done is what I call second-hand mourning, mediated through texts and calls. Just like second-hand smoking, the grief has already been metabolized by someone else, and I was left with the last of the pungent and bitter hints.
On tóu qī, the seventh day after Nǎinai left us, my dad and aunts gathered at Nǎinai’s old apartment. According to my dad, in Chinese culture, the deceased’s soul has not fully left the human realm at the seventh day, and the family needs to say their last goodbyes at the place where Nǎinai once lived. They lit incense while talking to Nǎinai and burned spirit money with the hope that Nǎinai will set foot with a full wallet.
I was initially puzzled by my non-religious family’s intention to practice superstition.
“If we didn’t believe in transcendence or heaven, where will all the paper money you burned for Nǎinai end up at?” I asked my dad on video call.
“It is more of a ceremonial tradition than actually worrying about where they are headed,” my dad replied.
Days later, I realized my attempt to seek the spiritual destination for the burned paper money was actually my desperation to know where Nǎinai will go. The absence of an afterworld in my belief terminates Nǎinai’s existence after her death, but I was not given a chance to properly watch her leave. But money, marking one’s footsteps, ensuring one’s safety through enabling a degree of certainty at an unknown place, carries the best hopes and wishes. Nǎinai used to hand it to me with or without a plastic bag, but now, she deserves the same blessings.
*Grandmother on father’s side, **grandfather on father’s side
Contact Renee Ye at rye@oxy.edu
