Beginning of April is Qingming Festival in China, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day. This tradition has a long history, has become a festival for the Chinese people to commemorate their ancestors. It’s an opportunity to remember and honor their ancestors at grave sites; sweep tomb, offer food, tea and wine to the deceased members, to pay their respect. I went back to China and spent a month for this festival, as my families were waiting for me, so we can bury my mom’s ashes together.

I arrived there 10 days earlier before the festival, so we had time to prepare for this big event.

First time, the whole family got together discussing about the coming event, we got into an argument since we had different opinions, ended up my brother left. In Chinese family, usually the eldest son plays a big part of taking care of their aging parents, and in charge of their parents’ funeral and Qingming event. In my family, my mom lived with my younger sister, my sister arranged my mom’s funeral. We didn’t expect my brother will change after mom past away, we believe we can do it and do it good. Our love toward to our mom won’t die, it will live in our heart until we reach the end of our own life.

What we learned from the argument was that, we realized my brother-in-laws, my brother and us girls couldn’t reach to an agreement. Chinese from different areas have different customs for same festival or events, my two brother-in-laws are from different part of the country. My family is not a Han Chinese family, but we are living in a Han Chinese community. We grew up with Han people, lost our own traditions and customs, tried to imitate their customs at their festivals, but we don’t have the same culture background and root. When my father past away, he was buried here by the people from this community with their custom. My brother participated the ceremony and knows how it went, we girls don’t know about it at all.

Next day, my sister and I went to a place where sells curving tomb stone. Mr. Miao who owns the business is a very nice man, he has been doing this business for over 20 years, has lots of experience and knowledge. He spent 3 hours to talk to us, found out my family’s situation, and offered his time and his workers to do the whole thing for us. He picked the best day for the event according my parents and all of us siblings’ Zodiac. Getting into an argument or fight at the ceremony are not a good thing, hiring a professional crew seems like the best choice to prevent disagreement, so we hired his crew.

There is another reason why we chose Mr.Miao. Three nights before we met him, my sister had a dream. In the dream, we were moving new furniture into our parents house, not a new house, but was remodeled house. The steps were going under the ground, someone fell and his face began to change every second. My sister was scared, suddenly a man’s voice said: ” Don’t worry, I can do this for you. I’ll tell you what you need to prepare, 7 yard of red cloth ……” My sister woke up before the man told her everything.

When we met Mr. Miao the first time, we told him our family’s situation, he said the exactly same words in same order, 7 yards of red cloth was on the top list of preparing items. We would like to believe that her dream foretold the future, and guided us to the right decision.

The stone was 5cm thick, 50 × 100 cm rectangular. edited the text and printed it out on a sheet, pasted the sheet on stone, then curved. Writing in vertical order, my parents’ names are in the center, their date of birth and death on the left side, their children’ name are on the top row of right side, daughter-in-law and son-in-law’s name are on the next row, then their grandchildren’ name are at the bottom row. Curved heavy stone frame supported this tomb stone, like a main entrance of a fancy old style of Chinese house. On the top stone of the frame, curved dragon on the left and phoenix on the right. An antithetical couplet curved on the frame of stone.

8,000yuan was his price, it paid for the tomb stone, and he provided materials for this project, like sand, cement, bricks and his workers. His crew moved all of the materials to the grave site, knocked down the old cement tomb stone; opened the right side of the tomb, put my mom’s ashes container into the tomb which was a space built with bricks; topped with another small piece of rectangular stone and covered it with dirt. As family members, we were not suppose to do these things on that day, only none family members could do it. We lighted fireworks, incense, burned joss paper, kowkow when Mr.Miao told us to do. It took the whole day, from 7:00am to 5:30pm. In between these time, we went back to home, cooked lunch and took the meal to the working crew; cooked offering food and held an offering ceremony after the crew finished the work; then prepared supper at the end.

It was a good day, everything went very well, rained after we finished the ceremony. We all pleased by Mr. Miao and his crew’s work,  paid him and gave red envelops to every worker. Thanked them sincerely.

We sisters are very close, I really enjoyed the time with them, so comfortable and relax when we were together. They told me more about mom before she fell. A few months before she past away, she divided her silver which were the only valuable things she possessed. She told my sisters, let my brother to keep her three pieces of old furniture if he wants, she had them since she married. All the things she did and said seems like, that she was preparing to leave, she took care of all of her personal things. Hearing all of these things about her, my tears burst out like water from broken dam, couldn’t stop. I felt sad because I couldn’t be there for her at the end of her life.

My sisters also told me that my uncle’s  death (my dad’s younger brother) might be the trigger of my mom’s fall. In that morning a relative came to visit, told mom that my uncle died 10 days ago, in the afternoon my mom ended up in hospital. After mom past away, nobody told her elder sister about it, tried to hide the news from her. But she over heard it from other people’s conversation, someone saw her sitting in a corner alone and crying. Next day my aunt fell, the same way like my mom. She past away 25 days later after my mom’s death.

My parents generation of my family became past, now we are the eldest generation in the family, another younger generation are growing and they bring hope and happiness into our life. Looking into our life, it’s a combination of sadness and happiness.

We hold gratitude toward to our parents for raising and loving us in their own way, remember their love and try our best to give our love to younger generation. It’s like a circle, no matter how many rounds it goes, love always there, continue to exist and never die.