“I want to stop Wat Muang Mai, Ka.” I said as I drove our rental motorbike down Thepkrassatri Road.
My husband had uncharacteristic pushback. “No! Why we go there? I want go Kuhn Dam house! Raining soon!”
I don’t know why the urge was so strong. I slowed down and pulled into a spot at the end of the Buddhist Temple despite Ka’s objections.
“What we do here?” My husband insisted angrily.
“I don’t know! Maybe say a prayer to Buddha or something! God knows we could use the help.”
During parts of 2023 when our electric had been out at our old bungalow I had sometimes been visiting Wat Muang Mai daily to have a spot to plug in my phone and laptop. Despite this I had not been there one time this year in 2024. The old bungalow was gone and when we stayed in Phuket we were in Kathu at the construction site. Then we had proceeded to do a trip over the Thailand light fantastic that would make any travel blogger proud. It’s been trains, planes and automobiles, then taxis and tuk tuks, songthaews, subways, shuttle busses, BTS, busses, MRT, ferries and motorbikes ever since. I can count eight different hotel rooms we’ve stayed in, one on Koh Samui, one in Laos, one in Mukdahan and five in Bangkok, along with three stays with extended family or friends.
“I want go Kuhn Dam house! I want talk he about idea for where we stay! Raining soon what about our bags?” Ka insisted.
The storm clouds were indeed gathering and a downpour was coming soon. But I noticed the row of cars and motorbikes and the open gates of the gathering room to my right. There was a funeral going on, though I had no idea for whom.
Ka huffed away and sat on a bench out front. “Not our area this here! You know?”
I felt drawn into the room with the casket like it was a magnet. I wanted to pay my respects to the departed.
I had planned on doing my Midweek Memes today, but life had a way of derailing it. A few days ago in Bangkok I had heard back from the US Embassy regarding my husband’s passport and visa stamp to come to America. They had wanted a few more documents including my mother’s proof of domicile which I had sent in last year along with my husband’s court documents. I was sure that I had packed those as we had needed them to be reviewed for the Police Clearance certificate in March. But in digging through my phone book sized stack on Monday morning in Bangkok, I could not find Ka’s court transcripts anywhere. I realized that I must have left them in Phuket at the construction site and an overnight train ride to Suratthani ensued.
Brother Tee was still working at the construction site in Phuket and smiled warmly, as did every one of Ka’s former coworkers. I found the documents the US Embassy was asking for in a bizarre stack of papers that I would have definitely taken with me if it had not somehow been set aside separately. Thank God for them being there. But then the foreman got to talking in the morning and said that we had to go out as my husband was no longer working there and I am farang and cannot stay at a construction site. The police had already chatted to me about that too last month.
I walked into the room where the funeral was being held at Wat Muang Mai and approached the casket. A few women nodded at me knowingly as I knelt to light an incense and say a prayer. In going to Wat Muang Mai so often last year I have inadvertantly been a witness to maybe two dozen funerals there. This one took my breath away in looking at the picture of the deceased.
It was a baby girl this time. Her eyes in the photograph were confused and pleading and the image had been photoshopped to make her appear angelic. I puzzled over this. Of course if your child dies you might not want a picture of them smiling and bursting with life and love. A well worn baby walker was adorned on the side of the alter, along with toys and two bottles of milk, one half drank. I wondered if the half drank bottle had been the last thing consumed by the baby girl before she passed on.
“Gen?” A long time friend of the family approached me. It was not uncommon for me, having lived in this area of Phuket for so long, to encounter Thai people I knew at such funerals. I knew that this friend spoke pretty good English.
“I am curious what she die of.” I asked my friend. The casket looked strangely adult sized. I could tell from the Thai numerals that the baby had been born in 2566 and had died in this Buddhist year 2567.
“She about one year and six months old.” My friend said. She shook her head sadly. “She very sick long time. She have many problems in her heart.”
I inhaled deeply. “Same my sister. She die one year one month old. Her heart no good. She have hole in it.” I signaled with my hands to my heart.
“Yes I know.” My friend nodded. She might have known my story as Oh had insisted, when finding out that our baby would be a girl, on naming our daughter Elizabeth. I had to ask my parents permission as I had no idea how they would feel about naming my daughter after my dead sister. “This one she have three hearts.” I wondered if that meant what I thought it did, that the poor baby had been given two heart transplants. Sometimes all of the Kings horses and all of the Kings men can’t put it back together again.
My sister Elizabeth had been one of the first babies offered the pediatric heart transplant in 1985 or so. My mother had declined the procedure, something which she was blamed for after my sister’s death. “Elizabeth was in the hospital a lot and she had already had two surgeries and she just seemed to be getting sicker.” My Mom had told me about this. “I didn’t want to put her through that.”
“You want eating? Sit down with us.” My friend insisted. It became evident by all of the familiar faces in the crowd nodding respectively to me that most people thought I had heard about this funeral through my grapevine of contacts. I had not. Kuhn Dam and his entire family were there and by their seating in the front row during the final chants it was clear that they were family members.
“Where is your husband?” Kuhn Dam’s father asked me in Thai language. It was starting to rain.
“Out front.” I replied in English and pointed. I went out front to find Ka still agitated.
“Raining! Where we put our bags? I want go Kuhn Dam house!”
I put the bags under the awning of the Temple. “If you want talk to Kuhn Dam his whole family is here!” Kuhn Dam’s father approached my husband and Ka’s sullen demeanor changed immediately. Especially when he was handed a shot of whiskey and I was handed a beer on coming back to the tables. You can apologize later honey.
Another funeral was happening in another one of the Temple houses and the casket was headed towards the crematorium. I couldn’t remember there being two funerals at the same time in my time at Wat Muang Mai. I didn’t know anybody from that crowd, who were in all black and very somber. “He ladyboy!” My husband Ka informed me about that deceased person. I hadn’t seen a picture or anything regarding that.
I intuitively sensed who the mother of the baby was, even though I had never met her before. She seemed to know that I knew and greeted me with a cautious Wai. I watched her closely. Somehow I felt like I understood her situation better than anybody else at the funeral. I had seen it in my own mother.
Ka lit an incense and I lit another one in honor of the child. I asked Ka to read the baby’s name in Thai language for me, as I am terrible at deciphering it, and I said a prayer for her.
I wanted to see the baby’s body when the casket was opened prior to the final rites in front of the crematorium. In Thai Buddhist style the body is left as it was at the moment of death. I was surprised to see that the poor girl had not been in a hospital setting immediately prior to her death. She had blood flowing and dried from her nose and her baby teeth were covered in blood with her eyes closed and her mouth half open. There was no apparent trauma or injury but she appeared to have died from a seizure or convulsion. The mother was sobbing frantically, holding her baby’s little blueish hand and unwilling to let her daughter go into the fire. I would have given anything to bring the child back to life and take away her pain. It reminded me of videos of mammal mothers who will carry their dead and decomposing babies sometimes for weeks.
“She sick long time!” Kuhn Dam reiterated later about the child. I wondered if the doctors had been brave and valient and against all odds gave a dying baby many months more than she would have had otherwise. Or perhaps they had fought for nothing. At worst perhaps they had done something like given the baby a vaccine which had set her already ill body over the edge. I prayed that this was not the case.
These things ultimately come back to questions to our creator.
What would you say to a grieving mother in this? What would I say to MY Mother? This is the best I can do:
A part of you may feel relieved at this tragedy. Please understand that this is natural and you should not feel guilty about such a feeling. You might have been waiting for an outcome that was not delusional.
But then the void floods in. All of those careful little moments are gone. There is no hope for the future, however unlikely that future had seemed.
Please do not second guess what you did or did not do. You provided as best you could during your child’s brief stay with you on this physical plain. May your sacrifice bring you salvation. May your tears be blessings from God.
I pray that you find joy again…
I took this video when we visited the area of the old bungalow prior to visiting Wat Muang Mai. There were butterflies everywhere:
Kuhn Dam and his family adopted three of Daisy’s puppies to guard his rubber plantation. The dogs all remembered us and swamped us, which was wonderful. I am thrilled if our dogs can live on through them.
There’s already enough suffering in the world. Can doctors get back to trying to save lives?
Few have the gift of writing they way you do. I feel like I am right there with you and can visualize it all too. I don't know anyone else whose writing compares.
I come from a perspective that everything we do on Earth is a lesson. I've also been told by people who seem to know that Earth is the most difficult school. It's a painful environment, for sure. The unfortunate fact is that we learn best through suffering. Suffering need not be unendurable. The other part of the lesson is to transform suffering into happiness. When we remark that we're essentially spiritual beings in a physical body what we're saying is that these lessons accrue to the light or spiritual body which continues on through evolutionary steps in the Universe. Sovereignty and creatorhood become apart of us. The transhumanist has refused this route of excruciating suffering, enlightenment, and redemption and looks to become a creator via machines and abnegation of being human.