It also kept them from taking his food. For this first meal, Auntie Chin remembers to make plain vegetarian dishes with a side of sausage pork roll for the offering. Weeks before, Grandma Lanh had asked Auntie Chin to smuggle in a bowl of rice to the hospice, “But hold off on the cha lua,” she hinted, because as a devout Buddhist she knew to refrain from worldly desires, including processed meat, unless, of course, she were to eat it by accident.   

The family decides on a short-cut funeral: one day instead of the usual three. “Saturday is the only good luck day on the lunar calendar. Then, Sunday, the building is closed,” her sons, my uncles, reason. Her daughters, my mother and aunts, stand in the corner, cursing. “Always so cheap, these boys,” they say. They wonder, too, why Grandma Lanh’s jade bracelet is being buried with her along with the whip, and why Uncle Tiger’s daughter, my cousin Fanny, has claimed the rest of the old woman’s jewelry.

A monk and five Buddhist nuns perform the death chants. “How many of you cried the most?” he asks. Standing next to Grandma Lanh’s altar, his eyes dart from one corner to the other. “Those who chanted the loudest, you loved her the most.” He points to random faces in the crowd, his audience. “And those who didn’t chant at all, and I saw plenty of you, you didn’t love her at all.” He points some more and looks at me. “Even if you didn’t know the words, you should have mumbled something — made some noise.”

But the truth is, I notice everything — the fast-burning incense sticks, the tip fusing off so quickly like a sparkler, or the picture by the casket, the one Uncle Sau took last year. In it, Grandma Lanh smiles and wears a headband to flatten her already thinning hair. I notice, too, that for the first time in over thirty years, I pick up the incense sticks without pressure or guilt. I make a conscious choice to pray. I begin with “Our Father.” Then, I pause and revise with “Our Buddha.” Then, I pause again. Neither feels right.