Remarks from Ammamma’s Funeral

Prashant Fonseka
Sep 8, 2018 · 6 min read

I delivered the following remarks at my grandmother’s funeral on Monday, September 3rd, 2018, at the Pumphrey Funeral Home in Bethesda, MD.

I’d like to begin by thanking you all for joining us. My grandmother would be happy to see that so many of the people who were most important are here today to commemorate her life well lived.

I have always had a special bond with my grandmother. My first home was a dusty room in her basement. I am the oldest of her four grandchildren by a wide margin, and as a result spent by far the most time with her.

Buddhists, including my grandmother, believe in reincarnation, and my grandmother thought I was the reincarnation of her mother. I presume this was partially because the doctors originally thought I would be a girl. Though I ended up not being a girl, this notion, that I was the reincarnation of her mother, still stuck with my grandmother til the very end.

Over the last few weeks I’ve come to realize some of the ways in which I am like my grandmother, who I have always known as Ammamma rather than the conventional Sinhalese word for grandma, Achchi. Ammamma means mom’s mom and she preferred to be called that because she thought Achchi would make her sound old.

I’ve never been fond of aging, and neither was Ammamma. I am now 27, almost 28. My birthday was just about a week apart from my grandmother’s, but curiously, while I got older every year, Ammamma never aged. Every year, we celebrated Ammamma’s 29th birthday. I almost managed to catch up.

Like me, my grandmother had a strong personality. She always spoke confidently and declaratively. She wasn’t always right, but she usually was. She was seemingly always lucky, up to and including her peaceful passage.

While few amongst family would describe either my grandmother or I as sweet, as we shared in bluntness and a critical eye, all know us to be deeply caring and devoted to our loved ones. Ammamma showed love not through charm, but through action. We could always rely on her in difficult times. Her Buddhist community could always rely on her support. Her love could be tough but it was as pure and real as love could be. Her life was one of action and agency; she drove herself and everyone close to her to be their best.

My grandmother was a fan of history and liked to frame the story of her life within a broader historical and geopolitical narrative, as evidenced by her writings over the last couple years.

Ammamma had plenty of source material for her writing; she was fortunate to have lived in one of the most interesting periods of time humanity has ever seen, and died with a profound appreciation of that. She always leaned into that change; at the time of her passing, Ammamma was making headway in a “Learn to Use the iPhone” book.

Born into one of the most illustrious families in what was then still a very British colonial Ceylon, Ammamma lived her life with purpose and a deep sense of duty as the world around her changed. She was raised amongst many siblings and often spoke of the glamor of her early life and the joy of being raised with her brothers and sisters, two of whom came all the way from Sri Lanka to join us here today.

My grandmother was proud of being Sri Lankan, or Ceylonese as they were known in colonial times and all of my grandmother’s life living there. Ceylon was considered the crown jewel of the British Empire, and was in many real ways the most advanced and economically developed place in South Asia. The pseudo-Britishness from this era never quite left my grandmother. Weeks ago she left a note for the gardener which said, “do not trample vegetable beds.” Ammamma was particularly delighted when I bought a pair of shoes on Jermyn Street in London; I am wearing them today.

Early in her life however the optimism surrounding her small country’s independence from the British faded into the chaos and misery of socialism; a movement that stripped her family of much of their land and ran their cherished but fledgling nation into economic malaise and ethnic conflict. My then young grandmother and grandfather soldiered on to make a new life in America, the shining economic light of the world. They did this to ensure the best possible futures for their children. Life in America wasn’t easy as the privileges they had in Sri Lanka were unattainable to them here. But, there were no complaints; they simply adapted and made the best of it. They, and my grandmother in particular, were resilient.

My grandmother was a keen observer of the rising tide of social change throughout the world, particularly as it related to the evolving role of women in society. Unlike some of her younger sisters who benefitted from shifting norms around educating women, Ammamma at first received only a high school education.

In a move that perhaps better than anything else represents the spirit and fearlessness of grandmother, besides the time I watched her kick a giant snake at her Park Road House in Colombo while everyone else was screaming, she enthusiastically went to college in later in life, starting off modestly at the local community college while her three children were getting degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Oxford. She wanted to prove to herself and the world that she, like her children and husband, was intelligent and could provide for others, which she clearly was and could. She worked full time into her 70s, well after my grandfather had retired. My grandmother took great pride in working, something her own mother could have never dreamed of doing, and took even more pride in her family.

Towards the end, Ammamma’s life was about her family and religion. The passage of my grandfather nearly a decade ago was difficult but my grandmother, tough as always, took it in stride and quickly settled into the role of family matriarch. Unlike my grandfather, who wasn’t shy about calling anyone at any time for any reason; calls I still dearly miss today, my grandmother would wait for me to call, as she didn’t ever want to be a bother. I’m very glad that I called, often.

While quiet approval was the typically the only direct praise one could expect from my grandmother, in private ahe spoke glowingly about her children and grandchildren. Ammamma was very happy with my mother’s decision to work full time later in life and spoke enthusiastically about every accolade my mom received at work. She was proud of her oldest son, my uncle Ruwan, for his academic and professional accomplishments and always trusted his business and financial instincts, especially later in her life after my grandfather’s departure. For her youngest son, my uncle Ranil, she had a special sort of pride as she felt he did everything more or less right so she never had to worry about him. He gave her two more wonderful grandchildren, including my cousin Harini who was particularly dear to my grandmother as her only granddaughter, and Dilhan, the youngest of the bunch. He will enter adulthood in just a few months; exactly a week after what would have been Ammamma’s 83rd, or 54th 29th birthday, depending on how you want to look at it.

With my grandmother ends a generation. She was the last in our line to have spent a meaningful portion of her life in our ancestral homeland of Sri Lanka. This Sri Lankan family is now American, and with that comes a new set of challenges. To my brother, cousins, and myself: we must strive to tackle those and all other challenges with the spirit and fearlessness of our grandmother. In her honor and in gratitude for all that she did for me, my brother, my mother, my cousins, my uncles, and my father, I will do my best to the things that I know she would have wanted me to do and to maintain our family legacy as the torch is passed to us.

Thank you.

Prashant Fonseka

Written by

In pursuit of magic