Chapter Excerpt: The Funeral
Guest writer Kay Merkel Boruff shares a story of meeting death and surviving
This week’s “Story of Vietnam” is an excerpt from Kay Merkel Boruff’s 2018 book, Z.O.S. A MEMOIR. The book tells the story of the wife and widow of an Air America pilot killed during covert operations in Laos.
Excerpt from Chapter Three | The Funeral
Übermensch awakens and leaves, without turning back, burns his text,
erases his steps: His laughter bursts out.
—Nietzsche
Until Merk was dead—and I’d analyzed every facet of our relationship—I didn’t realize he was the problem. Two years before Merk and I married I was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, caused mostly from stress, and loss, and obsessive-compulsive behavior. My world shifted, platelets broke away. Subsequently, I lived with a barrier, a protection, like a broken leg you continue to favor with a slight limp even after the cast is off and the pins are out.
Following a year of marriage, I still couldn’t commit myself completely to loving him. Then if he left me, it wouldn’t hurt so much. The problem wasn’t Merk. It would have been anyone who tried to love me.
Nonetheless, Merk wore me down. I did go to Sai-Gon. I buried a husband. I survived. Merk was a male chauvinist. He taught me to fight.
I’d forgotten most of my life in Bangkok until I re-read our letters. One incident, however, remains clear in my mind, mentioned almost in passing, embedding in prattling prosaic details—riding the bus, washing sheets, preparing meals—the heat, the rain, the dirt, the depression.
Toi, the Thai leasing agent who found my apartment, came by and so I’m going Sunday to see the cremation of her brother-in-law.
The incident was filled with answers.
She knew that I became a Buddhist when I taught school in California. When she called, she explained that her brother-in-law died in a motorcycle accident going to visit his mother. She said that although his death was a tragic loss, karma governs all lives. If a man’s last thoughts at the moment of death remembers a weighty good action performed in this life, his good karma will take effect first, and he will be born under better circumstances. I thought of Merk’s death and his last thoughts. He always came home distraught yet strangely aroused after flying in a dangerous battle.
Toi said, since her brother-in-law was on his way to visit his mother, his death was good karma. So he would be born under better circumstances unless he was thinking about some previous bad deed. Then he’d be born under worse conditions. I thought of the polio my brother contracted when he was ten. What had he done in a previous life? To understand the riddle of life, she said, requires a lifelong study and meditation.
After a short hot bus ride, Toi and I arrived at Wat Aroon, the Pagoda of Dawn. Red and gold roofs in seven tiers dipped and peaked above the fifteen-foot wall surrounding the Buddhist edifice. We entered the open courtyard. A huge cathedral-sized temple on the right dominated the clear sky.
Toi presented me to her family. I bowed my head and folded my hands in the traditional sign of peace, palms together, close to my breasts, fingers pointing up. I remembered not to touch the children on their heads which invites their spirits to leave and not to meet anyone’s eyes directly which offends Asians.
A temple bell clanged. Yellow-robed monks led the procession into the courtyard. The sun shone overhead. Yet it seemed not oppressively hot. Miniature bells hanging from each of the roof peaks tinkled in the breeze.
The higher status a family has, Toi said, the longer the waiting period before the funeral. Her brother-in-law had been dead only three months. The King or Queen would lie in state for a year. Why was that? I said, thinking, horrified, this man’s body—I assumed unembalmed, in the heat.
I thought of the funerals of my great-grandmother and my nephew and began to feel panicked. I hated funerals. What the hell was I doing here? I seemed to float through life, untethered to emotions, passively allowing anyone, other than myself, to make decisions, or maybe allowing fate to decide.
Toi said that when the body and soul die, it takes time for the spirit to leave. Then the spirit is either quiescent or chooses to incarnate. This facet of Buddhism was difficult for me to accept. I knew that matter had to go somewhere. Matter and the soul. When a Christian dies, I knew he was with those whom he loved.
I watched the other American guest, camera in hand, climb the narrow steps to the top of the temple. Two tall columns flanked a small level area. Near him stood a young Thai girl dressed in Western clothes.
The monks led the funeral cortege, the family members following slowly up the steps. I turned sideways, the steps too narrow for my sandals, and marched behind Toi. I concentrated on my balance, my leg muscles firm from climbing the stairs to the apartment. After a laborious ascent, I reached the top and faced the ornately carved red and gold lacquered casket. Beside it stood a huge bronze candlestick with a pale green candle. The monks handed me a bundle of sticks, then motioned for me to leave the area down the steep steps on the left side of the temple. Nervous yet excited, I was eye level with the red tile roof of the smaller building. I counted seven tiers, the seven limbs of yoga sutras, and began the descent.
In the dirt courtyard, I clutched the bundle of sticks and looked up at the American. His Minolta was the only foreign sound. The camera’s clicking comforted me. I thought of Merk’s camera, clicking, continuously clicking moments of our lives from the present permanently into the future. The young Thai girl stood beside the American. Four monks walked to the casket and lifted off the elaborate top to reveal a plain wooden box holding the man’s body. The girl, who was taller than the monks, peered at the dead man’s remains. The stench of the three-month-old decaying flesh flashed out at the surroundings. The girl screamed and fainted. The American caught her before she plummeted down the steps. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his nose and mouth as he knelt down, holding the girl.
Ignoring the girl, the monks continued the ritual. They placed the wrapped body in an opening in the back of the wall of the temple. With small candles, they lighted the bundles of sticks underneath the man’s body. The retinue again processed. The widow climbed the stairs and lighted her offering from the tall candle and tossed her flaming bundle into the flames. One of the priests cut a lock of her hair and threw it into the fire, symbolizing the ancient suttee, the immolation of the wife with her dead husband. Then each family member followed her path. I guess burning this man’s body will be my first chöd, a Tantric teaching I studied requiring followers to overcome fear by embracing it. My fear was death, Merk’s, and mine.
I followed Toi up the stairs. Thoughts as a child of three surfaced. I stared up at the smooth grey casket in my great-grandmother’s parlor. My aunt lifted me off the floor. My small hands clung to the casket. I peered into the pink-lined box. Eyes closed, the elderly woman lay sleeping, her face powdered, white hair loosely curled on top of her head. She smelled of White Shoulders. I guessed my Mamsey was tired. I wanted to touch her. A pink net was stretched over the strange box. Why wouldn’t Mamsey get up and play with me? My father stood beside me. He was crying. I reached over to pat the tears on his cheeks, to make him feel better, then put my fingers in my mouth. They were salty. He took me in his arms and hugged me. I felt warm and safe. I slipped on the last step but regained my balance as I reached the top. The sound of car horns and bicycle bells drifted over the wall. I peered out at the forgotten traffic several stories below. Life on the other side was locked out, life on this side was cradled in. The monastery, insulated from reality and negative karma, was a womb for saffron souls. The temple bells’ tintinnabulation in the breeze mingled with the gold leaf’s refraction in the sun. I raised my offering to the candle’s flame towering above my head and walked the remaining steps to the fire.
It was frightening to be so close to death, to be included in this young man’s funeral pyre, to know his body was being consumed by fire, his rotting flesh burning away, cleansing earthly ties, removing any sin he encountered during his life, severing his life thread sutratma to leave weightless energy: truth: to repeat the cycle again. I watched the fire burn his body. Strips of white silk that had bound the body fell from the fire, gangrenous flesh consumed, scorial turbid smoke now etiolated from grey offal to a calcimine ash offering. The wind changed direction. I fought the urge to be ill at the smell. Tossing the flame onto the center of the fire, I forced myself to pray, May you live in light and find eternal peace. Energy surged from the fire.
I walked away, folding my hands in the traditional sign of peace. Focusing on the monks attending the large green candle, light-headed from the sun, I bowed.
At the top of the stairs, two family members stood, handing out good luck mementos—to remember the dead man’s journey. The widow approached me. I bowed, received the gift, and began the descent down the right side, now completing a final loop. I clutched the black and white print object.
At the bottom, I looked closer at the material. A small black and white print handkerchief had been perfumed in jasmine, then pleated with a narrow, black ribbon into a fan-shaped heart, like a lotus blossom unfolding. A calm hovered over the courtyard. No one was crying. People didn’t seem sad. I looked at the crowd of black-haired Thais and felt isolated.
I said goodbye to Toi and her family and the American and got on my bus. I asked the driver to signal when we neared Soi Ha Sib Ha and moved through the crowd of Thais to the middle of the bus. The noise of the incomprehensible language was deafening after the quiet of the temple, then it became a buzz in my ear.
The image of the burning body was replaced with that of my week-old nephew. In the small casket lay Eric Ray’s bloated body, nothing like the thin whisper of a child I had never allowed myself to hold. My brother Frederic’s arm around me, myself a week out of the hospital, heavily medicated, rail-thin. People on the bus crowded around me.
I thought of the grief process. Denial. Anger. Acceptance. You work through the denial and the anger, and accept the loss, experience another loss, and the process begins again. The spiral continues, never complete. You place one foot in front of the other, continue on the path. The bus turned the corner by the market where I shopped. I continued to think about walking up the steps of the temple. The path was familiar, walking up, then circling down. It was like walking up the aisle to communion and circling back. The Eucharist invites us to remember Christ and those before Christ, like Buddha, to remember the priest’s communion. Though you are dead so shall you live. I ran my fingers over the black and white cloth, the narrow black ribbon. In my mind, my fingers lace around my Buddhist prayer hara, tiny beads click between my palms, locust wings shirring in the dry heat. Silent chanting.
The bus driver waved. I got off at my soi and started walking down the dusty road. Children were playing in the muddy Klong water. I approached the apartment, and the smell of coriander and allium greeted me. The maids were preparing their dinner.
I climbed the stairs and felt exhausted. Depleted. An empty vessel ready for manna. Yet in the exhaustion, I felt peace for the first time since I left the States.
I unlocked the door and inspected the priest’s markings. The six white dots above the door were arranged in three rows—at the top a single thumbprint of ashes, followed a second row of two, and a third of three, forming a triad: the shadow of an Egyptian pyramid: the illusion of an inverted cross.
Thanks to Kay for sharing this excerpt from her memoir, ZOS. If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment, letting her know.
Thank you for reading.
“Stories of Vietnam” highlights the many stories of Vietnam that exist in the American milieu—from stories about the country, to the American War there, to tales of travelers, and Kat Fitzpatrick’s own family saga.
For anyone else reading these comments, I am including this note from Part Three of my book to clarify my writing approach about events which I did not witness first hand:
I was not on my father’s evacuation and never heard a cohesive tale of events. However, I’ve read widely, visited the locations in Vietnam, and conducted numerous interviews. I have the collection of notes and letters he wrote during that time. Also helpful was the book written by his co-worker and station assistant Charles Eugene Taber, "Get Out Any Way You Can." With all these resources, I have—in what I hope is the best storytelling fashion—written a creative nonfiction narrative of the evacuation.
Kat, Because you have heavily novelized your own story by choice, it is difficult to know how to read entries on your site, i.e., to determine whether what is being conveyed is fiction, fact or a blend of the two. It would be helpful to readers to clarify such things in each case. I wish that you had stuck to fact in your own story because you write so compellingly.