November 16, 2008

• 11/13/2008

  Faint of heart, read no further!  I did not sleep well Wednesday night, which could be the result of sleeping on Grandma's short sofa.  I woke up about 4 in the morning.  The neighbors keep chickens, and I always enjoy the early morning announcements made by the local rooster.  Thoughts as to how to proceed with Grandma's grave moving "project" buzzed around in my mind.  She had begun the process of moving the family bones from a tomb in her native town of Sendai to a local temple in Kagoshima City. Going all the way to Sendai to take care of the family grave was just too much for her and she wanted everyone moved to a closer location, but the rules of the local temple stated that since the bones were being moved from an outdoor grave, they had to be recremated to insure that they were not moldy. Since I had been told by those managing the graveyard (the management is really loose) that I could remove the urns anytime I wanted, I determined to go and get them in preparation for doing something the next time I was in Kagoshima.  What is the difference where they are, in the graveyard in Sendai or at the house in Kagoshima?  I figured that if I had the urns at hand that it would make proceeding with the recremation easier next visit.  Grandma didn't have to know that the dear deceased were paying a visit. 

  After retrieval of the urns, the next step would be to make an appointment at a crematorium.  Recremations are usually done in the morning since crematoriums are usually busy with funerals in the afternoons.  Sendai City Hall had given me the addresses of the local crematorium as well as one in Kagoshima.  If I could just get the bones and have them baked in Sendai that afternoon...  I decided to call the crematorium at 8:50 am to ask about the possibility, because the worst they could say was no.   They said yes!!  A recremation would cost a Sendai resident $15.  Non-residents have to fork over $100, but at this point it was time I was buying.  What time could I have the urns at the crematorium?  How about between 2:00 and 3:00?  Fine, I said the dear deceased and I would be there. 

  BUT before I could go to Sendai, Grandma had a 10:00 dentist appointment.  On my way to pick her up at the home I stopped by the local temple where the dear deceased were to be interred.  The nice temple lady knows me because I have spoken with her a couple of times.  (Excuse me, I have to move these bones and haven't a clue as to what I am doing, would you mind telling me how to proceed?)  I showed her the document that I would be having signed by the crematorium and she said that was all I needed to complete the interment process.   It doesn't hurt to ask...  I inquired about making an appointment to have the bones laid to rest in the very near future, and she said that Saturday morning would be fine.  I also told her that I didn't know a thing about Buddhist procedure and that I was embarrassed to have to be asking such a question, but what was the standard fee for services rendered?  She said $100.  Whatever and thank you, we'll be there at 10:00 Saturday!!  I found that Buddhist people are pretty helpful when a foreign Christian tells them that she really hasn't got a clue.  I also discovered that Grandma had laid pretty good groundwork for the "move" and once I knew what to do, doing it was just a matter of doing it.

  I made a trip to the bank to get some money from Grandma's account to cover the expenses and then took her to the dentist by taxi.  She was not quite ready to go, and getting her going takes a bit of time, so I called the dentist to tell them that we would be a bit late.  Take taxi to the dentist.  Dentist usually finishes up in 15-20 minutes, but this is taking an hour!  Can I make it to the crematorium by 2:00??  Sweat, sweat...  Grandma was done at 11:30, so I called a taxi to take us back to the home, and there informed her that I was going back to Sendai to take care of her boney business.  She was not at all displeased.

  Going to Sendai used to take an hour on the train, but thanks to the fact that there is now a bullet train that stops there it would take me only 13 minutes.  The bullet train ticket price is $17 as opposed to $9 for a local train, but time was of the essence.  I arrived in Sendai and took a taxi to the graveyard and asked the driver to wait.  The stone slab in front of the grave weighs enough to throw one's back out, so I teetered it back and crawled halfway into mini crypt to remove the five urns, one small, two medium, one large and one extra large.  A neighborhood fellow paying his own family grave a visit came over to ask what I was doing absconding with the bones of a Japanese family's dear deceased.  I explained the situation and he said it was kind of a shame because the Sendai grave site was really quite a nice one.  Well, I told him I agreed with him, but that I was just doing what Grandma wants.  He suggested that the names of the deceased be written on stones to leave in the crypt.  Hmm...maybe I will get a "forwarding address" card from the Post Office, write the names and the new Kagoshimian temple address on that and put it on a little stand in the crypt later.

  I loaded all the urns in my small wheeled suitcase with a fleecy jacket as packing.  I really felt that this was a huge responsibility!  Hub's cousin had made mention of a priest being called to chant some sutras as the urns were removed, but I had no clue as to where to find a priest in Sendai even if I had wanted to do so.  I was glad to have been able to avoid the issue.  The neighborhood fellow kept telling me that I should be careful not to tip the urns over as I replaced the stone and headed for the waiting taxi.  I showed the taxi driver the map to the crematorium and offered apologies for asking him to perform a possibly distasteful task.  Apologies may not have been necessary, but it didn't hurt to acknowledge that the driver might not be thrilled that he is transporting eight dead along with his one live paying customer.

  "We" arrived at the crematorium and since the paperwork was in order the cremation could proceed.  I was taken to a large room with five doors on the right side that opened to ovens the size of large elevators.  The crematorium staff dumped the urns' contents in a neat row on a gurney.  I suspect that the largest urn may have contained the remains of four individuals, the medium urns one each.  The smallest urn contained only a bit of sand.  Hubby wanted his father's remains in a separate urn from the hoi polloi, so that was dumped off to the side.  The staff asked if I had brought new urns, and I hadn't, so they were kind enough to wipe off the largest urn for me.  Grandpa's had some gold leaf with his name written on it, and even though it was flaking off with age, the staff thought that it looked nice and suggested leaving it as it was.  Artists, they are.  They don't dispose of unneeded urns, but they advised me that I should break them so that they would not be readily recognized as urns (don't want to gross out the garbage men) and throw them away as non-burnable trash.  This "hasn't got a clue" person was glad for these helpful hints.

  The gurney was wheeled into the oven, and the doors were closed and locked.  Joss incense sticks were lit, and I was asked to push the "farewell" button to start the oven.  I was given the key and asked to wait for half an hour in a lobby until the process was complete.  After the toothpick came out clean, the hot gurney was wheeled into a room opposite the ovens and placed in a three sided metal frame that had six sets of chopsticks laid out upon it.  Of each set, one chopstick was bamboo, the other wood.  Two of the crematorium staff assisted and we used the chopsticks to place all of the bones back into their respective urns.  The fellows would say, "Here's an elbow, and here's a jawbone and.... "  Ok, thanks for the anatomy lesson.  As I said, they were almost artistic about the process, as if they were arranging food nicely on a plate.  Not too much dust, don't put in any of the blackened stuff, and poke through the ashes well to be sure that you have gotten all of the larger bits.  The rebaking process did not really decrease the mass of what had come out of the urns.  We were wondering if everything would fit, but a bit of shaking settled things down nicely so that nothing was left behind.  There is a bone at the top of the neck (nodobotoke) that is shaped like a Buddha, so they say, and that is placed in the urn last.  I went through the entire process rather automatically because it had to be done.  I suppose in retrospect that it was the least traumatic for me to do it, because I had never actually met any of the bones in the flesh.  I must say that it would have been nice to have met my father in law under different circumstances.

  I took the warm urns back to Sendai station and all nine of us rode back to Kagoshima on the bullet train.  Since the dearly departed had not gotten out much, I suppose that they were amazed that they arrived in Kagoshima in a mere 13 minutes.  They must have also been surprised by the new Kagoshima Central Station.  I showed them the Christmas tree, and then we all went to Starbucks for a Gingerbread Latte.  I sure needed one anyway, and they didn't complain.  After that I took them "home" on the tram and after dropping them off at the house in Kagoshima I went to pick up Grandma and her bucketful of laundry.  She was to have an endoscopic exam the next day and had to spend the night out of the home for insurance purposes.  Hub got her settled in bed and hung up the laundry for me, as I had collapsed back on the too-short sofa.  We didn't tell Grandma that the urns were in the house, because although she was glad that her project was nearing completion, we figured that she really didn't need to know any of the details. 

  Later - Those folks at the temple in Kagoshima are not so nice after all. Would you believe that we actually had to return the bones to the original grave in Sendai! Grandma had paid quite a handsome sum for her cubbyhole in the temple repository, but after she passed away the temple told us that WE had to become members of the temple in order to use it. Grandma had paid them money for YEARS to come say sutras at her home every month since Grandpa died in the 1970's and $15,000 for the cubbyhole, and this is how they treat her? She had been sick for a few years and they never asked about her even once. They only got interested when they thought they smelled a funeral coming up, which would net them another $3,000. We had no intention of joining the temple, so we moved the whole lot back to Sendai. None of the money was refunded since we were the bad ones. Parasites.

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