Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [14]
When our entourage arrives at the house where the body rests, a gamelan group plays for the hundreds of local people milling about awaiting the procession that carries the deceased to the cremation grounds. In addition to sarongs, the men wear scarf head wraps, a range of casual to dressy shirts, and running shoes usually. The women look more stylish, attired often in silks. Several family members bring out the casket, swathed in fabric, and with the help of others, lift it into the brightly colored, pagoda-shaped funeral tower made of bamboo, paper, cloth, mirrors, and flowers. At least fifteen feet tall, it rises like a pyramid in eight tiers, indicating the high social status of the deceased lady. A photograph of her hangs on the tower, along with the image of a turtle protected by two fierce dragons. Her eldest son climbs up beside the casket and ropes himself into place, holding a scepter topped with a paradise bird that will escort her into the afterlife. Rows and rows of men from her birth village get ready to hoist poles under the tower and carry it for almost a mile to the cremation site.
A troupe of women leads the procession, balancing baskets on their heads full of offerings favored by the deceased, including coconut, rice, and eggs. The gamelan band brings up the rear, playing as they go. This is anything but a stately funeral march. The people in charge try to prevent the living soul from returning to the dead body, confusing it as much as possible by rushing along, shaking the tower, running it around in circles, and constantly dousing it with water from a fire truck that stays in the thick of the procession the whole way. The hose drenches everyone as we hustle to keep pace with the hectic parade.
At the cremation grounds, men remove the body from the casket and place it in a golden-horned black bull sarcophagus, another sign of elite position. The bull sits on a pyre fired by propane and logs, and the women bearing offerings put them alongside. The body burns for several hours until nothing remains except ash, which the family takes to the ocean or to a river to wash away. Most of the attendees, including us, hang around until near the end, chatting, eating, and occasionally looking up to check the progress of the flames.
Now it’s Flat Stanley’s turn. After breakfast the next morning, we prepare for a procession and cremation on our hotel room balcony, facing the mountains, the most sacred direction in Bali. Obviously, we can’t do everything the same—the fire truck poses the most insurmountable problem—but we try to come close. Bill improvises a casket for the salvaged body parts from a paper napkin on our terrace dining table. It’s equally easy to assemble an appropriate funeral offering, borrowing a small incense basket from the hotel grounds and filling it with freshly dropped flower petals and a Double Stuf Oreo, almost certainly one of Stanley’s favorite foods.
Donning our sarongs again and tying the sashes around them, we head outside to the veranda. With the offering basket balanced on her head, Cheryl leads the march across the balcony toward an ashtray pyre at the far end. Bill plays the role of the funeral tower, lofting the mortal remains in his upraised arms, and spins and bobs behind Cheryl to confound Stanley’s soul. When he reaches the ashtray, he places the remains inside and ignites the fire, reducing the relics to ash, which we toss over the terrace railing into the river far below.
Stanley the Second makes his debut just before noon, enjoying a photo op by a lotus pond.
If Stanley had been consulted in advance, he couldn’t have picked a more serene and spectacular spot for his cremation and reincarnation. The expansive balcony of our honeymoon suite at the Ulun Ubud Resort and Spa peers over a deep river gorge at an untamed jungle climbing the sheer wall of the opposite slope up to a flat summit of terraced rice paddies. At the far end of the veranda, the bathroom shares the open-air setting and views. When either of us is taking a