Remembering the Dead

It’s been about 18 months since my mother-in-law passed away, and my wife still pays her respects regularly. We have her picture setup with some flowers and incense, and per custom my wife will burn incense in the morning. The kids, who miss their “baba”, offer incense sometimes too.

We also started enshrining an old photo of my maternal grandmother, who passed away 33 years ago, and burning incense for her too. Obviously, this is not an American custom, but I felt that it was a good one to adopt. I briefly touched on honoring one’s ancestors in a past post about day to day Tendai Buddhist practice, and remembering this I decided to take up the practice.

My grandmother was pretty ahead of her time. She was a computer nerd in the 80’s, and would dabble a lot with old Tandy Color Computers, dial up on local BBS’es, and hung around Star Trek forums online. And, she would share all this with me as a kid. I have a lot of fond memories of staying overnight at her house on weekends.

Thanks to her, I developed a love of computers, and that love of computers helped me build a career from which I can raise a family now. Just as we owe my mother-in-law for her many ways of supporting us in our early marriage, my grandmother also helped us by inspiring me to learn some good technical skills.

The reason why I posted this though was to not just reflect on the past.

Through Buddhist custom, we’ve been honoring past ancestors, and expressing gratitude, but also it’s important not to get stuck in the past either. Conduct here and now matter too. The quote above from Fire Emblem: Three Hopes (the sequel to Three Houses), really expresses this point nicely:

Living in the present is the best we can do. We owe it to those who can’t come back.

Fire Emblem: Three Hopes

My wife strives to be a good mom the way her mother was, and I try to be a good dad, including working an honest career. We both look forward to being the “nice grandma and grandpa” for our grandkids someday. 😊

Of course, this isn’t just limited to raising a family. A person can also just “pay it forward” in helping others. Just as our parents (warts and all) sacrificed much to raise us, we can selflessly help others around us, or help future generations by making the world a little bit of a better place. But, even more simply, taking time to enjoy one’s life, the breath one takes, their continued good health and so on, these too can honor our loved ones who aren’t around anymore.

Namu Amida Butsu