I fingered the cold hard bone fragments in the rectangular plastic box. Just like the regular boxes you will keep your spare towels or old magazines in under your bed. Complete with the plastic handles that snap down conveniently as locks.
That's it? I thought to myself.
That's it to something that once was bore life? There were flat skull fragments, splintered long bones, a ball from the shoulder socket joint, some metal screws attached to a short plate (from a previous orthopedic surgery) and many other unidentified bits and pieces.
A mere 7 days ago, I was chatting to my aunt while she reclined on the hospital bed. Her amputated right foot stump was bandaged up neatly and resting on the pillow. Her speech was not as coherent as before but she was still alert. Unexpectedly, in a short span of time, she had succumbed to pneumonia and sepsis, due to her immunocompromised health condition.
It was a somewhat morbid contrast to the state she was in now - literally dry bones in a box. It felt strange and sad too that I could no longer feel her hands or hear her voice. She had after all watched me grow up.
"Look, a rib fragment" I commented, passing it carefully to my wide-eye 7 year old nephew. He fingered it curiously, then snapped it easily into half, exclaiming "Look, it's hollow!" I stifled a gasp and another relative shook her head quietly. I supposed it must feel rather abstract for a child to associate the dry bones with his chatty grandma of the not-so-long-ago past.
Yes, the bone somewhat hollows out centrally. Mr Tan, who was orientating us through the "ash-picking" process had previously, matter-of-factly, educated the kids (and the adults), that if bones were solid through and through, it will be too heavy for us to move around effectively. Also the high heat of 1200 degree celsius during the cremation would have eliminated any existing bugs, hence it was absolutely safe to handle the bones, according to Mr Tan.
Under Mr Tan's guidance, we each took turns to place the bones with our bare hands, no less, into the upturned china urn, in preparation for respectful storing in the colombarium. Generally, the skull bones had to be the first to enter so that the "head" faces the sky when the urn was placed the right way up. Otherwise, will it be like doing a chronic head stand? Yikes.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. It suddenly struck me how real it is that what truly makes who you are is your soul. Without our soul, our body is just matter. Simply space occupying mass, as any physicist will say. Just like the chair I'm sitting on or the the coffee mug in my hand.
Rene Descarte's,
I think, therefore I am, recollected from my uni days - finally made sense to me.
Truly, death is the great equalizer. My aunt's body has been reduced to mere bones and ashes, just like all the other rich and famous people that has ever lived - William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presely, J. F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and the list goes on.
Only Jesus Christ managed to beat it all.
I need to remember that life is more about the journey than the destination. I don't want to race through it all with my blinkers on, get there and realise how many things I've missed along the way. I don't want the track in front of me to be the only thing I have been seeing the entire time. I want to say "你好！(hi)" to the faces I pass and relish the different experiences I stumble upon.
