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Beginnings of Ramadhan holidays usually call for celebrations, but this year, events took a different turn. Students went home as usual, and I was about to follow when one of the head teachers approached me and politely explained the situation: one of our teacher’s grandfathers had just died, and since his father was already in the hospital (unrelated), he could especially use our support. So six of us crammed into one of the head teacher’s cars and made the bumpy trip through the countryside up to the family’s home.
Anytime I leave the main road, I feel like I’m in a different world. Sure, the schools are a bit shabbier, the homes a bit plainer, the goats a bit freer. But the big difference is the paddy, which terraces stretch for kilometers on end in some places. Usually, the waters cascading down the mountain north of town keep all the vegetation a constant, brilliant green. However, because we’re in the dry season now, not all fields can be properly irrigated, and the dirt roads have become sun-scorched and cracked. So where the drive up to the grieving teacher’s home might usually be a serene experience, at least this time, the enjoyableness was muted by the intense heat, yellowed paddy, and clouds of dust.
Showing up to the wake unannounced and—thanks to my whiteness—diverting substantial attention away from the ceremony would have been a recipe for awkward five months ago. But thanks to PC, I feel pretty well desensitized to uncomfortable situations. When we arrived at the teacher’s home, the tone was a heavy, can-hear-a-pin-drop silence. Dozens of sandals already crowded the front steps, so we took off our own. As we did so, a young man came outside to greet us with handshakes and his best smile. We followed him inside to the family’s reception room (the first room at the front of most Javanese homes). There, the space was divided into two groups of folding chairs facing each other across the room. On the side already mostly filled sat the extended family of the deceased, the men and women sitting together for once. The teachers and I quickly walked over to the other chairs, giving quick greeting and handshakes to all the men before sitting down.
No one talked aloud… just whispers. The teacher sitting next to me quietly indicated a few of the important family members seated across from us: the wife, son, and grandchildren among others. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any tears among them even though the grandfather had passed away (unexpectedly) just that morning. If the mood was serious, then, it was also composed in an utterly Asian way. Emotions seemed sublimated in order to preserve dignity (“saving face”),and given the formality of the experience—the ritual handshakes, the pointing out of key family members, the head teacher’s condolence speech—our significance as guests seemed not so much centered on emotional commiseration as on validating the family’s dignity. Despite the somber circumstances, the ability to “hold it together” in this culture by keeping a straight face or even cracking a smile while facing grave circumstances appears to indicate strength and discipline. So likewise, as guests, a few things that I initially found strange, maybe even a little disrespectful, might make sense after all. The fact that we only stayed for fifteen minutes, just one of us offered condolences, and no one bothered to keep up a sympathetic frown might be interpreted as complimented to the family’s honor. No one denied that intense pain was still being felt. As one of my counterparts noted, there had been plenty of wailing before we’d arrived. However, by maintaining a “no-nonsense”, formal performance as guests, the teachers and I seemed to have made the implicit statement “We respect you, and because you are strong, we know that you will be able to move past this experience quickly.”
Something else unrelated happened a few days later that sort of confirmed all these suspicions. On a quiet Saturday afternoon, my family heard ambulance sirens, and we all rushed out to the road to see the vehicle speed past. In our (relatively) rural part of Java, ambulances always come too late. If someone is truly sick or injured, it’s quicker to drive them directly to the hospital. Therefore, the only real reason ambulances are called here are for grieving families to let fellow villagers know that someone has died and that person was “important enough” to justify ambulance expenses even though the chances of the body being taken away are low (Muslim families bury their own just a few hours after death, if possible). So death becomes a sort of ceremonial spectacle, and that’s how my family treated it. Even though we all knew the mother and child who’d just been killed in the motorcycle accident (I’d photo’d with the mom two weeks before), my parents expressed being much more impressed by the ambulance call than they did being saddened by the death.
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