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Instructions were given to the relatives and mourners to come to the family home at 7:00 AM and to leave from there in a funeral procession to the crematorium at the wat. The monks entered and prayed over the body with their chanting for a few minutes, and then they ate the breakfast that was provided to all who came to the family home. |
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In Cambodian culture, when people must travel long distances and at odd times for services like weddings and funerals, the family always provides a meal. About 40-50 people gathered at the home for a breakfast of boh-boh, a rice porridge. |
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When everything was ready, the surviving eldest son (three older brothers and sisters were killed by the Khmer Rouge) led the procession from the house. He is carrying an powdered milk can holding joss (incense) sticks and on the tray is an oil candle that must burn from the time of death until the end of the cremation fire. |
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The coffin is placed on a funeral truck on two sawhorses. The monks sit on metal chairs on either side of the coffin. |
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The custom is to walk to the wat where the body will be cremated but because the wat is far from the family home, the son and a grandson lead the procession for the first 100 yards or so along the road leading out to the main street where they got onto the back of the funeral truck. |
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The daughters and other female relatives rode on the tailgate of the truck or walked behind it, sprinkling a mixture of flower petals and what looked like raw cotton balls on the roadway. |
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Other family and mourners also walked out to the larger road and there they got into cars or on to motorcycles for the fifteen minute slow drive to the crematorium. |
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At the crematorium, one of the buildings in the large compound holding the pagoda and the residence of the monks and various meeting rooms, the truck was backed up the the steps leading up to a platform and the coffin lifted onto the sawhorse set up in front of the furnace door. |
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The decorated carved wooden top of the coffin was removed, to be used again, and the shroud temporarily pulled down to show the face of the dead man for the last time. The monks chanted prayers during this part of the service. |
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Then the family and mourners who had gone up to the crematorium platform walked in a circle around the oven structure three times. |
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The son and grandson then knelt before the furnace while the wat officials placed the coffin on a pile of wood in the furnace and lit the fire and closed the door. |
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It takes a couple hours for the fire to burn down and consume the body. The family and friends moved to the porch in the background to wait until the ashes had cooled, and then they collected teeth, bone fragments, and other unburned pieces to put into an urn which will then be kept in the home or something like a mausoleum. |