It is the third and last night of my father’s three-day funeral. The piping sound of the qeej and the throbbing drum — that used to be a drum of war but now is used only for funerals — have stopped for this night. Tonight is a night for songs.
There have been other songs throughout the three days, starting with the song to Point the Way, where an elder chants to guide my father’s spirit from Fresno, to Santa Ana, to Honolulu, to Nong Khai Refugee Camp, to Long Cheng, and finally to Sky Mountain where he was born, so he can retrieve his birth coat to transition back to the spiritual plane.
But tonight’s song is epic. Our family has retained a Txiv Coj Xaiv, master messenger, to follow father into the spirit world, to ask him to come back. And if he won’t come back, if he has any last words to impart to his descendants.
The master messenger stands by father’s coffin, facing the audience. My extended family kneel in front of him. He starts his journey, narrating it in song, verse after verse, hour after hour…
He follows father on a winding road that curves along the contours of the landscape, uphill and downhill, through karst mountain passes and across rivers, through thick forests where fallen leaves pile to the ankles and alpine meadows where pine needles pile to the knees. Finally, he sees father on a far ridge and calls to him to stop.
Catching up to father, the master messenger asks if he will come back. Father says he can’t:
When I left, the roads were clear,
But now they are overgrown.
When I left, the river beds were dry,
But now they are flooded.
The master messenger asks if father then has any last advice for his descendants. Here, father is more agreeable. He launches into verse after verse of song. Do not steal, he advises. Do not lie. Do not cheat. Do not commit adultery. Treat people with respect. Love your family. Wake up early and work hard. Be frugal… All this in beautiful, rhyming verses.
Father, who was never an eloquent man in life, and who suffered a series of debilitating strokes that made him increasingly unable to speak during the last ten years, now seems free to let his voice soar. Yet, no matter how beautiful these surrogate songs,
Oh, father! How I wish you and I
Had sung our songs to each other
While we were face to face
On the same plane.
About the author:
Soul Vang is the author of Song of the Cluster Bomblet (forthcoming from Blue Oak Press, 2019) and To Live Here (Imaginary Friend Press, 2014).
Poet, educator, and U.S. Army veteran, Vang received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno, and is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC).
Vang’s writing has appeared in Academy of American Poets (poets.org), Water~Stone Review, Abernathy Magazine, Asian American Literary Review, Fiction Attic Press, In the Grove, The Packinghouse Review, Southeast Asia Globe, and The New York Times, among others.
His awards and honors include the 2014 Imaginary Friend Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Horizon Artist Award from the Fresno Arts Council.
