The Crematorium

I had the chance to visit the cre­ma­to­rium where the ashes of my mater­nal grand­par­ents are stored. On look­ing out to one of the hills in the ceme­tery, one can see that it’s lit­er­ally cov­ered with graves. Burial is being replaced by cre­ma­tion nowa­days, due to the lengthy pro­ce­dure and high cost of main­tain­ing a grave. People have begun to accept cre­ma­tion more and more as a dig­ni­fied way to be pre­served. My grand­par­ents share the same tablet, which has golden let­ter­ing and is very respectable.

When I was young, I looked up to my grand­fa­ther the most. He was the smartest per­son I knew, and taught me lots of lit­tle odds and ends. He was born and raised in China, and entered one of the few uni­ver­si­ties there after high school. Being able to attend uni­ver­sity was quite an accom­plish­ment back then, and he only had one year left before the civil war broke out. He joined the ill-fated Nationalist side, where he would have had a chance at being a com­mis­sioned offi­cer had there not been a need for English speak­ing Chinese peo­ple. He spoke English flu­ently, so he was used as a trans­la­tor for the British troops. He was shot in the arm once, which he recov­ered from, and fled to Hong Kong to avoid pros­e­cu­tion when the war was over. There he met and mar­ried my grand­mother, who was born and raised in Hong Kong, fled to Viet Nam dur­ing the Japanese inva­sion, but came back to Hong Kong once it was over. My grand­fa­ther assumed a career as a mete­o­rol­o­gist, and my grand­mother became a house­wife to three daugh­ters and one son. They both lived long in Hong Kong until they passed away.