Terrible and Beautiful

In life, we are loved for who we are, for our differences and specialness. In death, we are all the same, we are just this; just bones. 

-- Mr. Lim, the tuk-tuk driver

This is not a pretty post. Possibly darkly humorous, but underscored with a bit of horror and a lot of sweat and definitely a fair amount of cultural misunderstandings. 

I want to preface this first by admitting that this post is mostly me processing Eriq's death and cremation. There are pictures below, which may seem inappropriate but is not unusual amongst Cambodians. 

Secondly, I have to say that it's frustrating to realize how little I really knew Eriq. It felt like he told me quite a lot about himself, but on meeting others who knew him, learning some of his history, and most especially on viewing more of his art and writings... I knew him not at all. So everything I write here about him is my perception and conjecture. The nice thing is, everyone who has spoken to me about Eriq saw one thing similarly: he was a real character, a magnetic and funny man whose light shone bright, outwardly at least. 

Eriq was alone, and I believe he was lonely, too. Estranged from his family - his siblings, his adopted son - he had come abroad to live his best life - this I know because he told me so directly. Eriq had been to Cambodia before, and met Mr. Lim the tuk-tuk driver at some point when trying to open a small hotel. They became friends of a sort, beyond expat and hired driver but I couldn't say how far beyond, except that Mr. Lim clearly honored Eriq and has been dejectedly sad since his passing. 

While I knew him, Eriq lived alone, except for his two small adopted-in-Cambodia dogs, in whom he took much joy. He deplored being around negative, gossipy people. He enjoyed dropping in on art events, chatting with those he knew, and then bouncing right out again. 

Monday, April 24: I was at work when a friend from the consular section came to my office and told me of Eriq's passing, of his being found by the landlord, of his having died alone (but with his dogs) sometime over the weekend. I didn't believe it, was sure that it wasn't the Eriq I knew, who I'd seen the previous week and texted with just three days before, on Friday. When I was shown his passport, I knew it was true. Then it was guilt: why hadn't I checked in more, knowing he wasn't feeling well? Why didn't I insist? It still didn't sink in, though. When I got a text asking if I'd like to join a small group of Eriq's friends for drinks to discuss and remember? Then, then it felt real. 

One member of the group, a neighbor of Eriq's, related how once the authorities were called and the body removed, he watched police ransack Eriq's apartment, taking various items. We later discovered that his electronics and designer clothes and shoes had all disappeared. When I walked my dog past his apartment building that night, I saw a pile of bedding, a mattress, and some clothing tossed on the street nearby. I felt sick.

The small group decided together that we would make sure that Eriq was not alone in being farewelled from this world. We contacted Eriq's siblings, found on Facebook; got permission from them to sell some of Eriq's work in order to pay for funeral arrangements; worked with the landlady to go through and handle Eriq's remaining belongings; and we arranged for his cremation. 

Last Sunday was the cremation. First, three Western friends, including me, and Mr. Lim the tuk-tuk driver went to the funeral home. Don't picture a stately, solemn, clean building. No, this was an open air, squat, ground floor place. The Cambodian heat and humidity was bearable but ever-present. Eriq's pine coffin - more of a pine box, really - rested on two sawhorses. Two funeral wreaths stood in front of it, one with his name and another with 'Rest in Peace', as well as a small table on which we placed a framed photo of a cheerful and jaunty Eriq. Mr. Lim was our translator and helped move things along. 

A monk arrived in his robes of bright orange, along with an elderly man dressed in white pants and a white shirt. White is the color associated with death and funerals in Cambodia. They chanted together, sometimes in cadence and sometimes in echo or counterpoint. It lasted for several minutes and when they finished, they left. Mr. Lim translated a question for us: did we want to see Eriq's body before we went to the crematorium? The three Westerners said no. I can speak only for myself: I knew Cambodians did not embalm the dead; that Eriq had died over forty days earlier; and that I wanted to remember my clean-faced, bright-eyed friend as I had last seen him. Mr. Lim chose to view the body, so the rest of us took a step back. We heard the cover removed, a moment of silence, and then Mr. Lim ran a few feet away to vomit into a group of potted trees. The three of us Westerners stared at each other mutely, then clambered into the tuk-tuk when Mr. Lim said it was time to go to the crematorium. Eriq's pine box was loaded into a minivan, which we followed for about a fifteen minute drive. One familiar thing: the minivan had it's hazard lights flashing and we kept right behind it, our very local-flavor funeral procession staying together for the whole drive despite motorcycles weaving this way and that through the slow moving traffic. 

In Cambodia, I have learned, there are crematorium where the people who tend them live, sprawling complexes of ramshackle houses made from boards, dirt roads, and cement and iron-black metal crematoria ovens. 

That's right, I said it: ovens. It felt ghoulish, and it was depressing: the ovens were encased in small structures with steps leading up and a covered area in front with room for a coffin and a small table for ceremonial items. A chimney reached skyward and I couldn't help but think of concentration camps from the Holocaust. 

The minivan was unloaded - pine box, wreaths, and all - and set up in front of great gaping black oven doors. We waited for a few other friends to join us - we were maybe nine in all - and then set up another table draped in white: incense, Eriq's framed photo, lotus flowers brought by the others. We took turns lighting incense sticks and placing them in the pot of sand. Then we spread out letters and art pieces, made by Eriq's students and friends, on top of his pine box. We murmured and we surely said a few words. We lit more incense. 

And then the crematorium workers moved everything into the oven. They motioned to a large metal rod with a flame at the end, and Mr. Lim and I took it together to light the area underneath. Then we stepped back with the others and watched as the fire grew hotter. There was not much to see, and after about twenty minutes, we all departed to reconvene at Eriq's art studio for a little wake. Before we left, Mr. Lim told me that someone would have to come back a few hours later to retrieve the remains. He mentioned something about bones and I explained that we wanted his ashes in the urn. He shook his head. 

At that point, we all thought that we would receive ashes placed in the simple urn that was part of the cremation costs. I volunteered to return with Mr. Lim. After about an hour at the wake - a nice affair looking over Eriq's art, chatting quietly, drinking sangria - I went home to rest. All too soon, it was time to go back to the crematorium. Mr. Lim picked me up for the thirty minute drive through traffic and heat. On arrival, he asked me again about the bones, and I repeated that we wanted the urn, with ashes. Finally, Mr. Lim explained that Cambodians don't deal with ashes, that this would be very strange, and that instead we should make sure the best bones were retrieved. Flustered, I didn't respond, waiting to see what would be brought to me. It should have been obvious what was about to happen: we didn't go to the funeral home to simply pick up an urn; we were right back at the crematorium, in front of the oven structure where we'd bid Eriq farewell. 

As I watched, four young men with shovels cleared out the space below the oven used earlier. They moved all of the... debris? remains? with shovels to a spot on the pavement ten feet away, spread it out carefully. Then they produced sticks and tongs and squatted around the ashes to pick out the largest bone fragments. I stood, sweating in the heat, grimly fascinated and a little bit in shock, watching them poke around the ashes, embers and bones, gently moving the latter to a flat basket. Mr. Lim explained that the bones would be washed in coconut water before the best ones were placed in the urn. I didn't ask, couldn't, what constituted "the best." 

When they were done, they buckets of water over the remainder of the ashes and shoveled it all into a garbage bag, which was placed onto the floor of the tuk-tuk. I carefully climbed in, feet to the side, and off we drove. The next stop was the river, where we got onto a large wooden party boat belonging to a friend of Mr. Lim's. We motored out to where four rivers intersect, including the Mekong and the Tonle Sap rivers, to put Eriq's ashes in the river. Mr. Lim lit an incense and chanted for a moment; then he took one corner of the bag, I took the other, and we upended it. I thought we'd pour the ashes into the water, but instead a second bag with the ashes inside tumbled straight into the water. I cried out, but Mr. Lim assured me that it was ok, tossing the first bag in after the first. I cried out again, but it was too late. We motored back to shore. I felt as though we'd just dumped garbage into the river. We had, in fact, but Mr. Lim seemed completely baffled by my response. 

Before we got off the boat, Mr. Lim asked me how much the cremation had cost; when I told him, he shook his head sadly and told me we'd been cheated. Then, he suggested we visit a nearby pagoda to ask the monks there if they would accept Eriq's urn and watch over it. I agreed, not expecting another forty-five minute drive through heat, humidity, and traffic. The day's shocks had numbed me and I was ready to go soak in my apartment's AC, to process things. Instead, we drove to Mr. Lim's favorite pagoda, where he searched for a monk-friend of his. After a few fits and starts, he found out his friend had just left to go pick onions, and would be back in fifteen minutes or so. 

I took a deep breath, and told Mr. Lim that it was time to go home. He begged me to wait for his friend, then went to speak with some women washing dishes, then talk to someone on his phone. When he came back, he was beaming: he had called his friend, who agreed to accept the urn. I blinked, not quite understanding why we couldn't have just called in the first place, but stayed quiet. We trundled off and an hour later, I was at my apartment. Mr. Lim had explained that he would pick up the urn the next day and take it to the pagoda. We should make a donation, he said, in money and in food and beverages for the monks. We should do it in person, he said, for good karma and in honor of Eriq. He would help us arrange it all, he said. 

I agreed, bid him farewell, and, stunned and tired and feeling grungy, went to my apartment to ponder the day's events. 

Would Eriq have laughed? Or partway through, would he have stage-whispered to me, "I'm bored, let's go," as he had at a couple of art events we attended together? Would he have rolled his eyes, slack-jawed in disgust, and made a pithy and snarky judgment? 

I will never know, because Eriq is gone. But I like to imagine his possible reactions. It makes me feel better. 

Because that was a terrible day, one that didn't give me much closure or sense of farewell. It was hot and sticky, raw and disturbing, real and brutal. 

Kind of like some of Eriq's art. That's a post for another time, though.