After my grandmother's funeral, with the overwhelming religious melody still nightmarishly haunting my mind, I asked my mother why she decided to hold the funeral in such a way, since the practices of the event were unfamiliar to us.
"Because it had to have some kind of...ceremony. Otherwise, do we just say goodbye to her...so lightly?"
It was a matter of weight, the weight of death, of recognising the loss of a beloved one.
Sometimes I think time is like an endless line. Without recognising the changes, it just goes on and on, like a book without chapters. To have ceremonies mark out events along the timeline is convenient and understandable. We want to give weight to the event. We want to recognise that it is not just another day. It is the day that something happened, that something changed. We want to remember it.
I have poor memories. Looking back, I don't remember how I have become who I am. I remember various events in my life, but I don't remember who I was when the events took place. My recollections are fakery imprinted by every present me, with less and less ink from the original. A ceremony might provoke me to recognise the event on sight, but it won't preserve what the event means to me.
What does my grandma's death mean to me? It is a simple yet difficult question. My grandma had been a part of my entire life before her death. Now without her, do I suddenly become a different person? Perhaps...not? I am still an extension of who I was yesterday, with no noticeable change in who I am. I do not really know what it means for me to lose my grandma, but I am certain that it is significant to me. I want to recognise and remember that.
Artistic creation often serves as a good reminder of the artist's stage in life. To make a semi-one-person documentary, to be vulnerable, and to have the attempt at honesty and sincerity, is my way of remembering who I am right now, at this very stage when a most beloved one has just left me. It is my way of marking an end to the important chapter, the chapter accompanied by my grandma.
Perhaps years later, looking back at this film, I will understand what it means to me.
