Heavenly Bath

Picture Story

II. Heavenly Bath

I purified his body, laid him out, then watched as he was pushed into the cremation furnace.

The furnace door closed, the flames rose, and forty minutes later the staff brought out a tray of white ash. I received it — warm to the touch, like my father's hand held in mine for the last time.

At the top of the painting, a pale blue trail of water pours downward — the purifying water the Dongba priest sprinkles over the cremation pyre, the ritual water of “washing the soul.” Below, the scarlet and gold flame-shaped strokes are not the fire of hell but a heavenly bath — the sky using flame as bathing water, giving my father one last washing. The red pointed shapes are all the people he knew in this life, gathering around him in the firelight for a final farewell.

White ash is my father's last colour. The Naxi say: white is the colour of the ancestors, the colour of the snow mountains, proof of a pure soul.