...

I can’t think of ye-ye without crying, still. I wonder why.

One day, I just had this image of him walking up and down the hallway in the big house in Chemor. He walks up and down and up and down again because it was his form of exercise and he would swing his hands as he walked. I see him in my mind doing that and I see him with his perpetual smile.

Do you think you could have put your elbow on someone’s coffin and rest your cheeks on the glass panel that separates you from the dead? I did. I couldn’t stop staring at ye-ye. If I keep looking at him maybe he won’t go away.

There is something so final when the coffin leaves the house. And then again when it enters the cremation chamber. Because ye-ye is no more.

At times I could have easily sat down with my cousins to fold ‘hell bank notes’ and burn them for ye-ye. Just to do something for him. But in my heart of hearts I didn’t want him to be in a place where what we burn away would reach him.

I want him to be in Heaven where he would have a young body again, and he would be light and happy and strong, and where I could be with him again forever and ever. And ever. Did he hear me when I desperately whispered that into his ears at different times?