Remembering … Being Remembered

by | May 25, 2014 | China, family, photography, Visiting Gulangyu | 15 comments

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When you’re gone …

After you’re gone, will anyone put flowers on your grave? On Memorial Day, will they still remember you?

I can almost hear you scoffing … Who cares? I’ll be dead by then. Dust to dust. Throw my ashes to the wind.

Yet when a parent or a spouse dies, suddenly we turn serious. We bring out the flowers.

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an ordinary day in the spring

A few years ago when my mom died, my sister and I took pains in choosing a nice casket and headstone. On Memorial Day we put flowers on her grave in a cemetery bright with flowers. The official purpose of Memorial Day may be to honor those who died in military service, but Americans use the holiday to honor and remember all their deceased loved ones.

Graves left behind

For many years, my late husband had no graves to decorate. His family had been on the wrong side of China’s civil war. In 1949, when he, his parents and siblings escaped to Taiwan, they left all the family graves behind. They may have had regrets, but they didn’t voice them, not to me.

Then in the 1970s and early ‘80s, the Bamboo Curtain that had kept China separate from the rest of the world finally cracked open. As soon as we heard of a tour from Manila to my husband’s hometown in SE China, we signed up.

My husband was afraid to tell his father at first. We’d be traveling into “enemy” territory. What would his father think? But when he broke the news, his father had no objection and only one request: Look for the family graves.

the ship that sailed from Hong Kong to Gulangyu

the ship that sailed from Hong Kong to Gulangyu

A children’s park and a cow pasture

The search for graves, in fact, became a major part of our trip. As soon as we arrived in China, we consulted with family friends and walked around the island with them, hoping to find my husband’s grandmother’s grave. After a thorough search, we were forced to conclude that the little wartime cemetery where she’d been buried had been turned into a children’s park. What happened to her remains? No one seemed to know.

After more consultations with family friends, we set out to look for another grave, this time on the mainland. Since nobody had private cars in those days (1983), a friend had to be found, someone who could surreptitiously borrow a truck from his place of work.

The friend turned up with a pickup truck so tiny my husband and I could barely squeeze in beside him. Even though it was raining, our three daughters sat in the back, huddled under their umbrellas.

road 001We rode over a causeway to the mainland, and soon we were out in the country, riding down roads littered with potholes. The driver grumbled and blamed unidentified “northerners” as we bumped along, splashing through mud puddles, the engine sputtering, sputtering …

I was just thinking that we should have left the kids back at the hotel when our little pickup finally came to a stop. Our girls were troopers, though, singing Broadway tunes in the rain while we waited for the men to come up with a fix.

grandfather's grave

grandfather’s grave

Somehow, we eventually found grandfather’s grave. It was in a field, not a cemetery, a couple of cows grazing nearby. At one time it had been an impressive tombstone, fifteen feet high and deeply carved, standing beside a pavilion with two stone tables. But now everything was mossy and dull. My husband stood in the scruffy grass and read the inscription. Then he handed me the camera.

“Take my picture,” he said.

He was quite a sight in his rolled-up pants and yellow rubber boots and umbrella. We sent a copy of the photo to my father-in-law as proof that we’d visited his father’s grave. We had another copy of the photo, but now—I’m sorry to say—I can’t find it.

We didn’t think to bring flowers with us that day. But I guess that wasn’t the point. We paid our respects.

How do you remember your deceased loved ones on Memorial Day?

How do you want to be remembered?

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15 Comments

  1. Marta

    I just wanted to say that your article is beautifully written. I loved the story about finding the family grave.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Thank you, Marta. I’m so glad you liked it.

      Reply
  2. CrazyChineseFamily

    This reminds me that my family tries already for over 12 years to find the grave of my father great uncle. The problem is that the graveyard is just too huge! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohlsdorf_Cemetery

    We have been there several times but always failed to locate the exact spot. The only time we have been there was at the burial 18 years ago…

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Oh, my gosh! The largest rural cemetery in the world. It’s hard to imagine trying to find one grave in a cemetery with 1.5 million burials on 966 acres.

      Reply
    • herschelian

      Most large cemeteries, including those of the Commonwealth War Graves, have a book which logs the burials with a Name/ plot number. If you ask them they can look up a grave location for you.

      Reply
      • CrazyChineseFamily

        Hey thank you. Just few months ago I contacted the cemetary with the info and after a couple of days they were able to provide the exact location + a map! We were searching all the time at the wrong location/ chapel area.

        Reply
      • Nicki Chen

        Holyrood Cemetery where my husband is buried does have a means of finding the burial plot. Bay View Cemetery, however, is very small. It does have a list of who is buried there, but there are no plot numbers. The cemetery in Sedro-Woolley can supply information regarding the location of a grave by section but not by plot. At present volunteers are working on transcribing the information. I can’t imagine why they hadn’t been keeping good records all along.

        Reply
  3. evelyneholingue

    Here in the US, Memorial Day for me remains a day for the men and women who have lost their lives during their miltary service.
    In my native France this in on La Toussaint, the American Halloween, that people visit cemeteries and bring fresh flowers.
    Thank you again for a post that tells about other customs, history and your personal background.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      My daughter, who lives near Washington, DC, said today that she’s looking forward to the next year or two when her son is old enough to watch the National Memorial Day Parade. There was a parade in Seattle today to honor our veterans, but watching the parade on Constitution Avenue in the nation’s capital would be an especially good way to spend Memorial Day.

      Reply
  4. foreignsanctuary

    Actually, they have a entire holiday called ‘Tomb Sweeping Day’ in Taiwan which is dedicated to cleaning the graves of loves who have passed. And where I am from in Canada, people usually place flowers on graves during special occasions (such as mother’s day) and there is usually a graveyard mass held in the summer and people use the time before the mass to clean the graves of love ones.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Thanks, Constance for mentioning “Tomb Sweeping Day” and comparing it to the Canadian practice that includes cleaning the graves of loved ones. The Catholic cemetery where my husband is buried also celebrates mass in its chapel–once a month and on All Souls’ Day and Memorial Day.

      Reply
  5. nrhatch

    I’m not scoffing, but no one will put flowers on my grave because I plan to be cremated. No grave required ~> Dust to dust. Throw my ashes to the wind.

    As for those who’ve gone before, I remember them wherever I am ~ on Memorial Day and other days. No cemetery visits. No flowers.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      The scattering of ashes is becoming more and more common. I think the fact that people move around a lot and no longer live near their ancestral graves might have something to do with it.

      Reply
  6. katecrimmins

    In our family, flowers are required or my mother would come out of the grave and give us “what for.” It is traditional to put flowers on the grave for many occasions. Because we can dig in our cemetery we plant a row of flowers in front of the gravestone that will bloom all summer. Everyone in the community does it and the cemetery is beautiful. I bought zinnias this year with some blue salvia. Hope my mother likes them. Usually we do geraniums but last year they didn’t do so good. When my mother was alive, we looked for her father’s grave. He had died when she was a child and it was in another cemetery, in an old forlorn part. It was so sad. I believe most of those folks didn’t have survivors caring for it anymore. One of my mother’s favorite pastimes was to walk the really old cemeteries in the countryside and read the stories on the tombstones. We spent many Sundays doing that when I was a child.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      It’s nice, Kate, that you can plant flowers in your cemetery. In the cemetery where my husband is buried they collect the flowers every so often so they can mow. I should keep track of the schedule. I’m always afraid I’m bringing flowers the day before they take them down. My sister, who’s interested in history, loves to explore old cemeteries. Sometimes you can imagine all kinds of stories by reading the names and dates on tombstones.

      Reply

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  1. Memorial Day: Flowers for Departed Loved Ones | BEHIND THE STORY - […] my 2014 Memorial Day post, I wrote about my husband’s family and how in 1983 we went hunting for…

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