One of the main focuses of Buddhism is the impermanence of life. “The existence of ours”, says the Buddha, “is as transient as the autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movement of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.” In the six weeks that I have been in Northeast Thailand, a Theravada Buddhist region, I have been a witness to the human life cycle in the form of both birth and death.
Three weeks ago, while working with the village medical outreach team, I had the opportunity to visit an hours old baby boy named Chianoon in the hospital. In the bed next to his mother were another couple and their newborn girl. While the mother left to shower, the father placed the freshly swaddled baby on the bed and knelt before her. He counted her fingers. He placed her teeny feet into the palm of his hand. He placed his nose on the bridge of hers. Never once removing his beaming eyes from hers, the pure joy he felt in that moment radiated throughout the whole room and I could not help but watch. He did not notice the smile unconsciously forming on my face nor my adoring stares at the beautiful interaction before me. In a room full of twelve other newly formed families, he could only see her. A silent conversation between father and daughter, his gaze was only broken as a single tear rolled off of his cheek and onto hers.
This past week, I was a witness to a different sort of tears – tears of grief. On Wednesday afternoon and early Thursday morning, two of the patients at the HIV/AIDs care center where I work, Amonrat and Saengtong, passed away. Last Saturday morning, Amonrat was placed on intravenous morphine and a breathing mask. When Tam and I went to visit her in the afternoon, the staff told us that they did think she would last the afternoon but that her husband and family were on their way. I held Amonrat’s hand as her eyes fluttered from the morphine, her pupils only visible for brief seconds in time. The weight of the disease was evident in her emaciated frame of skin and bones. Her breathing was labored but it sounded like a fight – the fight of one trying her hardest to hold on.
When Amonrat’s husband arrived at the center a half an hour later, a new life gave rise within her. Her loving eyes were reborn and just as the adoring father in the hospital was transfixed on his daughter, she could not take her eyes off of her husband, Thuiy. Watching from the window outside of her room in case anything were to go wrong, I watched Thuiy gently wash Amonrat’s face and hands with a hand towel. Feeling like I was intruding on their intimate moment, I tried to focus on the other patients around me, but I could not stop stealing glances of the couple. Both Amonrat and Thuiy were fighting – her for her life and him for his composure. But he never broke his calm disposition and she was not ready to go. An ambulance came an hour later to bring her back to her home so that she could die peacefully in the presence of her family. She passed away early Wednesday afternoon. She was 41 years old.
Before heading into work on Thursday morning, which is approximately 25 steps from my front door, I learned of the sudden death of another patient, Saengtong. Saengtong was a 36-year-old HIV patient who was also fighting tuberculosis of the lung and a brain infection. He had been very confused lately and his speech was often disjointed. However, on the night before his death, he seemed to be doing well. He got up at 10:30 p.m. to ask the night staff for a snack. He sat with them and ate toast with jam and milk and then went back to his room. In the morning, he never woke up. The three other men he shared a room with said they did not hear anything from him during the night.
While I was prepared for Amonrat’s death, the unexpected nature of Saengtong’s death hit everyone, including myself, pretty hard. It was interesting though, I was sad for his death, but knowing that he went peacefully in his sleep, I was more so sad for the other patient’s who all share similar stories and who all were most likely thinking “am I going to be next?”
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Tamarah, Annette, Gert, and our volunteer supervisor Antonia attended Amonrat’s funeral on Friday afternoon with two other care center staff members. Upon arriving to Amonrat’s house, we were in the company of not only her whole family, but also the whole village. In the Thai Buddhist tradition, it is customary for the two or three days and nights following a death for villages to band together at the home of the deceased to be in fellowship with one another, to eat together, and to celebrate the life of the deceased individual. This day was no different. After paying our respects to Amonrat with incense placed near her casket, we were lead to a table where plate after plate of food prepared by various neighbors were brought to us. At around 1 p.m., it was time for everyone to make his or her way to the temple. The casket was brought out of the house and placed in the back of a pick-up truck ornately decorated in flowers. Tied to the front of the truck was a rope that four monks held onto. The last orange robe clad monk in the line, with his freshly shaved head, was Amonrat’s sixteen year old son. It is customary in Buddhism for sons or grandsons of the departed to become monks for the day so as to pass on more good karma to their loved one. The monks led the funeral procession with loud Buddhist chants, but all I could focus on was Amonrat’s son’s somber expression of grief and brokenness.
Once we reached the wat, we sat in chairs under a wooded area in front of the crematorium. Those who wanted to devote the service time to prayer knelt under a covered area to the left of the crematorium. The coffin, after being driven around the crematorium three times in a counter clockwise motion, was placed next to the enclosed pyre. The service was a collection of extended chants from the monks followed by the presentation of offerings for the monks. Then, Thuiy cleansed Amonrat’s body with coconut water. Next, all of those present walked the steps of the crematorium to place a traditional stick with a piece of incense and candle onto the pyre and to pay their last respects to Amonrat. Her casket was then placed atop the metal pyre and placed into the crematorium. Off to the left hand side, all of her belongings, including clothes, shoes, and jewelry, were also burned. Once the fire in the crematorium started, those on the stairs started throwing candy and small coins into the crowd and then everyone got up and was chasing the candy like little kids at a parade.
The juxtaposition of my own somber emotions and the scene before me of adults fighting over pieces of chocolate prompted me to spend my Saturday researching the view of death and funerals in Buddhism. My research made the whole event make so much more sense to me. Beside’s Amonrat’s son, there had been no real sense of solemnity at the funeral. It was rather light hearted, sometimes jarringly so. I learned that in Buddhism, outward expressions of grief, such as weeping and wailing, should be restrained because they can upset the deceased and you want them to move on to the next life as easily as possible. Buddhists acknowledge that grief is natural but deem it is best to accept the grief through mindfulness and wise reflection on our own impermanence and gain self-composure because dying is something that everyone must go through. The final rite said upon the deceased even explicitly states “having recalled that such and such persons, who used to be our relatives and friends, had kindly done this to us, such relatives and friends should perform the rites for the deceased. They should not weep or lament with grief, since to do so would do nothing for the deceased, who will remain as they are.” It all made sense to me, but it did not diminish the fact that this has been a hard week on everyone.
Luckily, someone somewhere up somewhere knew exactly what I needed to end this tough week. On Friday night, Bee, a seventeen-year-old boy who also lives in the Garden, asked if I would run with him at 5 a.m. the next morning. Forgetting that the next day was Saturday and in my shaky Thai, I committed myself to running with him the next morning, but only if he pushed it to 6 a.m. At 5:40 a.m., I was awoken firstly by my alarm clock and then by knocking on my door and Bee yelling “FAAHSIGHHH DUN DUN DUN” (Faahsigh – my thai name – wake up, wake up, wake up). So at 6 a.m., Bee, Bon, a fourteen-year-old boy who lives here as well, and I set out to run through the rice fields. Despite being half asleep for the first part of our trip, I am so grateful that I was with them that morning - running, watching the sunrise, in between two rice fields, taking in everything around me, while also practicing my Thai with my new Thai little brothers. Of course, it wouldn’t be one of my stories though if it didn’t involve us needing to turn around early because I was almost charged at by a water buffalo because apparently they like the color red. Note to everyone running where water buffalo may be present – don’t wear red shirts.
Even before starting to write this post, I had no idea how to start because I knew I would have to write about the hard parts of the last week but I was also feeling an overwhelming sense of joy after having just looked at jumping pictures I took with some of the kids that live in the Garden today. Yes, this week has been hard, but I also have an amazing support system here in my community members and in the people that live in the Garden. In the short time I have been here, I already feel like family. Last time I Skyped with my program coordinator Kimberly, she told me that even on the computer camera, she could tell that I was glowing. And you know what, I am. It might not be the father staring lovingly at his daughter glowing, but I feel safe here, I feel loved, I feel needed. I feel home.
So if a lifetime is only like a flash of lighting, then I’m glad I’ve lived part of mine here.
