Arriving Home

We went home straight away to Jip’s village for the funeral. Chanting by Buddhist monks began the same night, at the house where she was born, grew up, and was married. On each of the next four nights, the monks returned for another hour’s chanting. A cremation ceremony took place at the nearby temple on the sixth day after she passed away. We scattered her ashes in the Gulf of Thailand.

During the five-hour trip south from Bangkok we narrated each turn so that Jip would know where she was along the way. In the rented van were Jip’s brother, caregivers, uncle, and me, surrounding a coffin that contained her body. Before we arrived home, the well-oiled village event machine had magically set up tents in the front yard. Blankets donated by neighbors were hanging down at the open sides of the tents.

Each evening dozens of people dropped by to make merit by joining the chanting. Each day we received visitors who came down from Bangkok—Jip’s college classmates, my office colleagues, people who decided to skip a Thai Studies conference that had brought them to Bangkok from all over the globe, and even my aunt, who happened to be in the same time zone (Tibet!) when she heard the news. A brigade of volunteer garlic peelers, cooks, and dishwashers kept everyone fed out of a temporary kitchen.

The combination of good friends, relaxed pace, and community ritual was just what Jip would have wished for. Everything fell into place so perfectly that I suspect she had a hand in it.