Now back in Bangkok, I’m thinking that this blog needs a new focus and new author for a while. Jip wrote some wonderful short pieces about her grandmother and her mom that deserve a wider audience. They were parts of a book she was writing that intended to tell the recent history of Thailand through the stories of three women. I’ll post a dozen or so of the stories over the next few weeks.
The book project gave her great pleasure at a time in Jip’s life, I think it was about 2001, when she decided to cut her research coordinator job to part-time in response to the fatigue that sometimes accompanies MS. She took a trip home from Seattle to see her family, taped several interviews, and transformed what she heard into accounts of grandma and mom’s worldviews. Jip’s own philosophy about things evolved along the way, which you can see in a few of the stories if you’re looking for it.
Later Jip shared the book pieces with my sister Murph, who is a fine writer and editor. By then Jip’s eyesight was giving her lots of trouble. Murph read aloud with Jip, then stitched together a few of the sketches in an order that made sense to both of them. The next several posts will be the result of that team effort from 2004.
The original interview tapes and Jip’s notebooks await my attention. With help from a few people who have expressed interest, and a little luck, maybe in the next couple years I can finish the book she began.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Monday, September 05, 2011
Sendoffs
On the day after Jip’s funeral, I had longstanding plane reservations for a conference in Atlanta, bookended by stops in Seattle and Michigan to see friends and family. As seemed true throughout the previous week, Jip seemed to be directing my movements and those of so many others. I kept to the original itinerary.
One or two phone calls from Jip’s village somehow sparked a large gathering at a Seattle park on the day after I arrived in town. People from several of her circles there created a lovely memorial event, sharing stories, food, and gorgeous weather. Somewhere along the line a website for donations in her honor was created, benefiting a fine MS Center in Denver whose work we’ve long admired. Our goal is to underwrite one issue of their excellent newsletter.
More remembering happened during the Michigan leg of the trip. The family cottage had hosted one of our three weddings. (Pictured at right is my family on a bluff we call “Jip’s Point” because she liked watching the lake from there). I enjoyed quiet visits with my parents, siblings, and three great college friends who claimed to be in the neighborhood by coincidence. At the place I’ve long considered my pole star, I also felt the strangest emotion of the month: a touch of homesickness for Thailand. I suppose I should listen to that clue as I plan what to do next.
Wherever the road takes us going forward, Jip and I couldn’t have asked for better sendoffs from countless special people this past month.
One or two phone calls from Jip’s village somehow sparked a large gathering at a Seattle park on the day after I arrived in town. People from several of her circles there created a lovely memorial event, sharing stories, food, and gorgeous weather. Somewhere along the line a website for donations in her honor was created, benefiting a fine MS Center in Denver whose work we’ve long admired. Our goal is to underwrite one issue of their excellent newsletter.
More remembering happened during the Michigan leg of the trip. The family cottage had hosted one of our three weddings. (Pictured at right is my family on a bluff we call “Jip’s Point” because she liked watching the lake from there). I enjoyed quiet visits with my parents, siblings, and three great college friends who claimed to be in the neighborhood by coincidence. At the place I’ve long considered my pole star, I also felt the strangest emotion of the month: a touch of homesickness for Thailand. I suppose I should listen to that clue as I plan what to do next.
Wherever the road takes us going forward, Jip and I couldn’t have asked for better sendoffs from countless special people this past month.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
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.
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.
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