On the road…again!
Afghanistan to Zambia
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

A Buddhist Burial

Among the keepsakes we can expect to see in future years are digitized photographs and videos of funerals and burial rituals.  In our family, we have a lengthy video of the burial ceremony of my Mother-in-Law, Dao Thi Trang.  While she was alive we often referred to her as Tiger Dao. In passing into the next life at age 87, she is still Tiger Dao in our thoughts.

Two full-length videos of her burial ceremony in Viet Nam were sent to us by relatives where she spent her final hours on earth.  Folks in the village knew that she was gravely ill and she knew it too, thus she decided to spend some money to fix up the house and also benefit her favorite Buddhist monk who came daily to make repairs and to pray for her.  During the two hours of prayer on her final day, she slipped away peacefully.  Her physical remains are interred just outside the house where she passed on.

In Vietnamese tradition, it is not uncommon to have burial sites on the same land where family members currently reside.  Hence, the gravesite of Tiger Dao is alongside her sister who passed away only a year earlier.  In the scanned photograph below, Tiger Dao rests in the tomb on the left, and her sister Dao Thi Nghiem (Sao) lies in the tomb on the right.

The tombs of Tiger Dao and her sister Sao

Dao Thi Trang, our beloved Tiger Dao