One Rough Weekend.

This weekend has been one hell of a roller coaster. Two and a half weeks ago, my grandpa died and we weren't able to have the wake/funeral till this weekend. They decided to chose this weekend because it was my aunt's birthday the week before and they were adamant about not having it on her birthday. However, this weekend was my cousin's birthday. She came back to San Francisco from Las Vegas to come to grandpa's funeral. Happy belated birthday, Nikki; sorry you couldn't celebrate it. She had to sit out on the wake and just go to the funeral.

The wake was hard. Basically it consisted of me sitting there crying because there wasn't anything else for me to do. I remembered tearing up already as I walked down the aisle to see him. The place smelled of incense and I could see part of his head over the shoulders of my aunts and uncles. We had to take some incense, bow three times, stand it on this container and then bow three times in front of grandpa. That was hard.

The wake/funeral was open casket and I thought about how old he actually looked. His face has already lost the color that normal humans possessed since he has been dead for 20 days already. There was only a few strands of hair on his head. He didn't look like he was sleeping at all. His eyes had sunken in and nothing about him looked human. I didn't want to believe that it was him. I half expected him to jump out and be like "HA FOOLED YOU." Of course that was silly, too silly for an 18 year old girl to even think about. But that was what I was honestly hoping for.

After bowing, I had to sit on a bench by his side with the rest of the family members. Everyone was crying, but there was no loud sobbing that was memorable of my grandma's wedding. Perhaps everyone already accepted the fact that he was old and it was just his time to go. But I have accepted that yet. I still think that he's immortal. He's still here somewhere going to Chinatown, having a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. I didn't want to think that that shell of a human being was formally the man who held my hand to cross the street, the man who took me on the MUNI and pointed out the best places to eat, the man who foolishly bought too much buns. Seeing him in that casket was mortality's cruel way of telling me that I've been robbed of everything that my grandpa embodied.

Unfortunately for me, I'm a crybaby. When I am faced with a situation that isn't favorable for me, I start tearing up immediately. I really can't help it. I know that I should get thicker skin, but I just can't help it. How can you voluntarily turn off an involuntary reaction? It gets worse when people tell you to stop crying and that it's gonna be okay... because that just makes me want to cry even harder. To feel that support makes me want to let even more out. I tried to turn my focus away from the situation and look at different things in the chapel. A window, peeling paint, the wornness of the seats that we're in. Anything to keep myself from totally losing it. It was hard; I had a mound of tissues by the end of the ceremony and the day after, I still had to go to the actual funeral.

When we arrived to the funeral home, they put black bands around our right arms (they also did this during the wake) and for the women, they put a pin in our hair. White for the daughters and daughter-in-law (my mom) and green for the grandchildren. They also gave us a red one to hold when we take off our other pin.

The actual funeral was pretty similar to the wake, except family friends can come and pay their respects. But grandpa was stubborn. He had refused to make many friends. In fact, the only people who came were friends of my aunts who came to show their support for their dead dad. Grandpa never really had any friends. He was a lone wolf, too stubborn to socialize, too much of a kid of really understand the adult world.

My cousin was able to go to the funeral. It was the first time she had seen him for about half a year. And their reunion wasn't under favorable circumstances. She cried. I've never seen her cry. She always seems to have this strength to keep going, to resist against all odds. To see her cry was something truly heart breaking. Of course, I was crying harder. By the time the funeral began, I was already becoming numb to the fact that my grandpa has passed on. But that didn't make it hurt any less. However, I had cried buckets the day before and my eyes were already swollen.

I don't even really remember the funeral and it was only two days ago. Maybe I don't want the memory of the funeral. I do remember the staff telling us to keep our heads down while they closed the casket. I started crying then. It was kind of a finalizing event. He's gone. Forever.

We went into the cars and followed the hearse over to grandpa's house to make one final goodbye before heading to the cemetery. My 婆婆 was outside burning something. I don't know what it was, but it's probably some kind of tradition that Chinese people had. The ride to the cemetery was long and kind of boring. There was too much time to think about grandpa so I decided to just sleep. I was already emotionally drained and my head had become light and I was ready to just collapse.

I woke up just as we went through the big gateway into the cemetery. Again, it felt like a threshold between the real world and the afterlife. The cemetery was empty, vastly different from the last time I came to pay my respects to my grandmother. There weren't any picnics, there weren't any people. There were, however, those annoying seagulls looking for scraps of food. We were again told to look away as they lowered my grandpa down the grave. There were some workers who pissed me off a little. They look like they had such smug faces as if this was just another day where some stupid family was mourning over the loss of a loved one. I wanted to slap all of them. But then everyone would think I was crazy.

After they lowered him down to his grave, we were given some incense and paid our last respects before they covered the grave. They also gave us a flower in which we tied our ribbon our and clipped the pin on. We all bowed three times in front of grandpa and threw our flowers on top of his grave. It was... unexplainable. It just kind of felt empty. I didn't know how to feel at that point.

We went to a restaurant afterwards and had lunch. I think that was a big step to becoming normal again. I had to leave early because I had to go to a doctor. Over the weekend, what I thought was a pimple turned out to be a bacterial infection and I needed to get it checked out. I was prescribed an antibiotic and they told me to come back the day after to check if I needed to get it drained. Turns out, I really did need to get it drained and it was probably a certain bacterial skin infection. They sent a sample down to the lab and I was given another prescription. Walking back to the car, I started crying. I was just so tired of everything. I felt like ever aspect of my life was going downhill. Even my health was fucking with me.

Now, I'm just trying to cope. I know that no one would want me to be miserable, especially not my grandparents. I bet my grandma would slap me silly for being so stupid. She was always the one who wore the pants. Always sharp, always stern. Grandpa was more of the kid that gave you buns to eat. Heh. I think I just need time now...