The Death Skull Moth
Memoir
Death stared me straight in my eyes as I looked at my grandfather’s sunken hollow eyes on FaceTime. He looked as if he was waiting for Death to sweep him off the ground and cradle him into the dark abyss. He was a living corpse with his bones protruding out through his non-existent flesh. My grandfather who once had a head full of salt n pepper hair was now bald. His mouth and cheeks were hollowed into the center of his face. I used to call my grandfather the Buddha because he sported a giant belly. But the cancer slowly ate away his stomach making him look concave.
“Do you see how you look,” My grandma glared at him as he saw himself in on FaceTime call with me. He nodded solemnly. My grandparents always had a funny relationship with each other.
“Stephanie, is that you?” My grandpa asked.
“It’s me, gong gong!”
“Well look at me, at least I don’t have a big belly anymore.” We both laughed. I admired how he tried to find humor through his last days.
The only photo of my grandfather as a young man is him in his wedding picture with my grandma. He’s wearing a white tuxedo and is posing behind my grandma. He is handsome. His nose is tall and straight, his jawline is chiseled, and his hair is slicked back. He looks like an actor, but he was not, he was a truck driver. He grew up in poverty in Malaysia and became a father at twenty and fathered ten children with my grandmother. He smoked cigarettes all his life and I remember constantly staring at his missing finger every time he pulled a drag from his cigarette. I always wondered why he was missing a finger.
“One day gong gong was driving past a car accident and one of the cars was on fire. He jumped out of the truck to save the people in there and as he was trying to save them, a metal part of the car sliced his finger,” I asked my mom one day. His heroic action would later be in the local newspaper. A fortune-teller once told my grandfather that he would have a second chance at life for saving a life. She was right. My grandfather first recovered from his cancer but his love of eating meat forced his cancer to aggressively come back. I remember watching him joyously eating the pork meat down to its bare bones. It foreshadowed the withering of his meat. The cancer came back aggressively this time. It made sure to eat away the meat on his bones this time.
My grandfather never told me that he loved me but I knew he loved me through his actions. He would always ask if I was hungry and always encouraged me to do well in school. He would always go out in the morning to buy my favorite Malaysian dishes to bring back home. Food and education became the way I felt my grandfather’s love. Growing up I always took my education seriously. I was always obsessed with food. Unconsciously it was my way of honoring my grandfather’s love even though he was miles away from me overseas.
I found out my grandfather died in the middle of a warm spring day when my aunt called my mom, frantically telling her the news. We quickly booked a flight to Malaysia. In a blink of an eye I was on a plane back. I’ve taken many plane rides back to Malaysia, but the excitement of the previous rides were replaced with sadness and gloom. It would be my first funeral I would attend in my life and the last that I would see of my grandfather.
I finally landed in Malaysia and as I exited the airport the hot humid air engulfed me. The palm trees vertically aligned my vision of view as my uncle drove me to my grandparents’ home. Death welcomed me as I entered. My grandfather’s coffin was showcased in the living room for everyone to see. I peered into the coffin and my grandfather looked like a skeletal artifact from the past. His mouth hung open as if he had the last words to say to everyone.
My grandfather had a Buddhist funeral and the week was filled with the chanting of monks and the visitation of relatives coming in and out. We were required to eat vegetarian for a week because in Buddhist belief it’s said that it helps the spirit of the dead rise to heaven and that eating meat would weigh down the spirit of the dead into hell. One afternoon, I was slurping down curry noodles when a death skull moth landed right next to me on the table. The moth had a skull face stamped onto its wings and their dark sunken eyes peered into the hollows of my soul. Buddhist beliefs state that when someone dies they reincarnate as a moth to visit their relatives.
“Mommy, come and see this!”
The whole family looks at the moth. They all take photos of the moth. It’s nothing like we’ve ever seen before. The moth sits on the table and stares back at me. The moth had a skull on its face. It sent shivers down my spine. I have never seen anything like this in my life. It was my first time ever seeing a Death Skull Moth and it was such a coincidence that it would land here during my grandfather’s funeral. Its blacked eyes reminded me of my grandfather’s sunken eyes. I picked up my phone and typed in “Death Skull Moth” in the Google search bar. The “Death Skull Moth” represents an omen of death. Very on brand I thought to myself as I stared at my phone and my eyes drifting to the casket of my grandfather.
The Death Skull Moth sat on the same spot for three days just as long the casket of my grandfather was left out. During the nights I would hug my mom to sleep because the thought of sleeping in the house with my grandfather’s dead body in the living room sent shivers down my spine a bit. The Death Skull Moth sat in the same place for three days and flew away on the day we had to move my grandfather’s casket to his grave. The Death Skull Moth flying away felt like it represented my grandfather getting ready to leave us for good. When it was time for my grandfather’s casket to be put into the grave the Buddhist monks started to say a chant. We all had to go around to put white flowers on top of my grandfather’s corpse. My mother started crying rivers down her face. Once her first tear went down on her face it was as if she couldn’t stop. It was the first time ever seeing my mother cry and it broke my heart. As the Buddhist monks chants grew louder and as the piles of white flowers covered up my grandfather’s corpse each of my family members started crying. Suddenly I could feel tears stream down my cheeks. As much as I tried to hold it in, I couldn’t. It dawned on me that it would be the last that I would see my grandfather. Dead or alive.
We all headed to the cemetery and once we got to the cemetery the funeral company collected shoes. We were expected to climb up the cemetery mountain with our bare feet. Some of my family members decided to do it and some of the others decided to cheat and to drive up the mountain. The point of walking up the hill was to do it together. No one ever tells you about the family drama that occurs during tragic events like these. You would think a tragic occurrence would bring people together but it oddly brings up pent up emotions and divides a unit. As I climbed up the mountain I could feel each rock and tiny porcupine balls pierce through my feet. The things we do for you, grandpa, I thought to myself. We finally reached the top of the mountain and I watched the casket of my grandfather get lowered into his grave. Everyone cries even more. His body was now six feet under but his soul would be like the death skull moth aimlessly flying around.
We all grab a bite after the cemetery and we meet with a spiritual advisor. He tells us that we all have to sleep in one room tonight because Buddhist beliefs state that after someone dies their soul comes back to their home one last time and it’s important to not be in the way of the soul. “Bullshit,” My uncle mutters underneath his breath. That night the whole family huddled into one room for the night to sleep. It was so uncomfortable the way we were all literally sleeping on top of each other.
BANG!
My eyes opened real quick. I can feel the body of my aunt and my mom start shivering. It sounded as if a door was opened really fast and slammed against the concrete walls. We heard the shower go off and suddenly the smell of durian lingered in our nose. My grandpa was obsessed with durian. Was he eating durian? I thought to myself. My eyes start to get heavy again and I drift away into my slumber. The next morning, my uncle who was a non-believer became a believer of spirituality.
“I had a dream where all I saw was bright white lights,” My uncle recalled. I remembered the spiritual advisor showing us a video of what would happen when someone dies. They usually appear in their loved ones’ dreams as bright white lights.
Now I know who is my grandfather’s favorite child, I thought to myself.
That night we all gathered in the living room to watch television. As my aunts and uncles gathered around they started gossiping about my grandfather. My aunt suddenly gets up and covers her nose.
“It smells like shit…”
My uncle takes a deep breath, “No it smells like flowers, it smells great.”
I furrow my brows in confusion, “I don’t smell anything at all. What are you talking about?”
“It smells like durian to me,” my mother chimes in.
Now I know the child that my grandfather likes the least, I thought to myself.
My mom and I leave Malaysia to go back to the states. It was time for me to start college. A new chapter in my life. The first night of my slumber back to the states my grandfather appears in my dreams. He looks like the healthy grandpa that I was used to seeing, not the corpse like grandfather who was poisoned by cancer.
“Take care of yourself, study hard in school.” He says to me, he always emphasized the importance of education. I always made sure I took my education seriously because of my grandfather throughout my academic career.
I opened my eyes and smiled to myself and thought, Now I know who his favorite grandchild is.
