In my previous post, I mentioned about exhuming my grandfather and the contractors would then take his cleaned remains to the crematorium to get cremated. Do you know what usually happens next? This is solely based on my uncle and friend’s experiences. This is part of their Chinese ritual after cremation. It is solely for your reference. This procedure of bone picking does not apply to everyone around the world or for any other religions. Furthermore, each religion and country has their own rituals after cremation.
During cremation, my grandfather’s remains were placed inside the cremation chamber, where it was subjected to open flames. The extremely hot temperatures would vaporise the remains and reduce them to small fragments. After the fragments had cooled down, they were presented to the deceased’s family.
Depending on the amount of exhumed remains left for cremation, sometimes cremation would only take an hour while others might take two hours. Bodies that were placed in a casket/coffin would take longer to burn and cool down. If you have an early appointment for the cremation, you should be able to collect the remains on the same day.
My grandfather’s fragments were wrapped in a red cloth from the columbarium (there are government-managed columbariums or private columbariums to choose from) and his children and grandchildren brought him to the temple.
At the temple, the monk would ask the children and/or grandchildren to pick his bones to place them inside the white urn. On the table, there were his fragments, an urn and a pair of long wooden chopsticks.
Once everyone had their turn to place his fragments into the urn, the monk placed his remains along with the red cloth into the urn. The urn was sealed and placed into his allocated slot at the Toa Payoh Seu Teck Sean Tong. Now his descendants would be able to visit his niche and continue to remember him. On the tomb sweeping day, his descendants are able to offer him things for the afterlife and pray for his blessing.
My auntie chose to be scattered at sea as she did not want to store her ashes in a columbarium. She passed away during the Covid period, and all the arrangements were arranged by the funeral parlour to scatter her ashes. Before Covid, the funeral parlours were able to help with the logistics, such as hiring a boat to take you out to the sea or assisting you through the ash scattering process.
There are also options to scatter your fine ashes inland at Garden of Peace (Singapore). In some of the photos, you can see that most of the fragments are mainly bones. They are definitely not like fine ash. Unlike what you see in the movie, where the actor would scatter the ashes into the air. It requires a special request to have ashes ground down to fine ashes.
As for my friend’s journey, her father was cremated at the government-managed crematorium and his urn was stored at the same location as it is a freehold location. They had a private room to view his fragments that were placed inside a big plastic tub (the tub looks very yellow as it has been used multiple times).
According to her colleague, some funeral parlours would display the fragments in a structured body. So the family would place the fragments in a certain order, beginning with the feet and ending with the skull, so that the decreased will be the right way up in the urn.
Her funeral parlour contractor explained the different fragments of the structure body and the significance of any colouring on the bones. They believe that differently coloured fragment bones signify good or bad deeds they did in their life.
Buddhist relics usually refer to pearl or crystal-like bead-shaped objects that are found among the cremated ashes of Buddhist spiritual masters. If you are visiting Singapore, you might want to visit the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum located in Chinatown.
Her dad had some pinkish bones which represents that he did good deeds in his life. After they placed his fragments into the urn, the rest were placed by the funeral parlour. The children then placed coins inside the urn but not the Singaporean $1 coin as it has an octagonal shape which is not good. Some would place fake jade inside the urn to symbolise wealth for the descendants.
Typically, the urn is covered in a yellow charm cloth before the urn is wrapped in a red cloth. They then left the room and made their way with the urn to the allocated niche location. His children/descendants (usually male descendants in the family only) carry his urn with burning joss sticks and sheltered with an oil-paper umbrella (油紙傘) to the location. The oil-paper umbrella was prepared by the funeral parlour and you should never bring it back home. You can read more about the umbrella taboo here.
The urn is placed into the slot. They had bought the 2-in-1 niche as it is for her mum in the future (who is still very much alive). In the photo, you can see that there is another urn.
Finally, they placed the niche plaque to cover the urn. They will re-do the niche plaque once her mother has passed.
Each culture and religion does things differently. It is always very enlightening to learn more about it. I hope this post will help people like me, who have not yet encountered this before, to learn more about it. If you have any questions or wish to share your experience, please comment below.