Dad Pham wanted to keep his send off small and simple. His only requests were his three Phamlings attend his burial in the grave beside Mum Pham. He wanted a low stress affair after the tumultuous and traumatic experience of losing Mum Pham and arranging her interstate funeral.
The thing is, Dad is dead and gone, but we have to live with our relatives and friends. No way could we do as he asked and not allow his siblings and nieces and nephews, and his Vietnamese community to grieve and pay their respects.
Big Brother Pham jail-breaked Dad out of hospital for a day last year so he could attend a big family event when a cousin from Germany came to visit Brisbane. In a way, it was good for our relatives to see Dad's ailing health. It meant when it was time to share the news of his passing, nobody was shocked like they had been when Mum died.
Of course, because Dad wanted to keep it simple, we instead had a funeral service in Brisbane for his siblings and then a burial service in Melbourne for his friends and Mum's side of the family. All during Tropical Cyclone Alfred. His funeral service was nearly postponed and then our flights to Melbourne would have been cancelled had we flown a day earlier. The name plate on his casket needed fixing, the flights we booked didn't go through but luckily we ended up on alternative flights even if they were at godawful hours, our mourning cloths were left behind by the funeral home's transport team and Little Sissy Pham had to brave flooding roads to meet the funeral director to collect them for the burial ceremony. The Brisbane temple road flooded and had a tree fall across it to boot, so we couldn't attend to make an offering after the funeral. Oh, and of course, the taxi we booked to the airport kept getting cancelled by drivers so Big Brother Pham and Sister-Not-In-Law drove ourselves there. I wrote most of this on the plane to Melbourne so, good news, we made it. ...and, yep, Melbourne is having a heatwave.
Part of me likes to think that Dad watched on as we overcame unexpected challenges, shaking his head in disbelief at how we persevered despite the odds to put on a big funeral and burial, when he'd timed his passing with a force of nature that we could have easily used as an excuse to keep things small and simple. It's not our fault, Dad, that you and Mum raised resilient, hard working, emotionally stable, physically able adults. Your Phamlings keep trying until we get it done!
Randomly my uncle's (dad's youngest brother) shoe broke in Melbourne the night before the burial. Luckily shops are open late in Melbourne so we got him some superglue. It's been a bizarre week. I'll write about the Melbourne burial another time.
