Wednesday, December 2, 1998
Relatives and Agencies Help to Retrieve Remains
Some families say that they had to spread money around the homeland to
successfully retrieve the remains. Others say they faced few roadblocks.
Yook Chew Tong did not want to visit China to retrieve his family's remains. So
in September, a cousin there helped with six cremations and shipments. A
nephew in Canada paid most of the expenses, which totaled about $5,000,
including transfer of another relative's remains from Kansas. They also
bought 10 local burial plots at a total cost of more than $25,000.
Over Labor Day weekend, Hank Kim flew
to Seoul and watched his father's bones dug up so they could be cremated.
He carried the urn on the airplane home and then to the cemetery, where
it was placed in the earth above his mother's coffin as the family pastor
offered prayers.
Kim says that the transfer, which he estimates cost about $6,000, was
well worth the time and money it took to reunite his parents.
Issues of family history surfaced as a dozen relatives,
including Lee's three children and her mother, traveled together.
An American cousin who was working for the U.S. State Department in
China helped them, as did other relatives still living in the Guangzhou
region.
One grave was in a crowded urban cemetery and the other in overgrown
farmland that had to be cleared with machetes. Ginger jars containing the
bones were dug up as the family conducted graveside ceremonies, burning
incense and offering food and money to ease the loved ones' journeys into
another life.
After the cremation, the family carried the ashes to California in
resealable plastic bags, double lined for safety. Then, in an informal
service led by Lee's husband, who is a Presbyterian minister, the remains
were placed in urns in a wall memorial at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in
Glendale.
U.S. funeral homes and cemeteries help with burial permits and with
arrangements for entombment or placement in temples or in columbariums,
structures built to hold urns. They also give advice on how to follow
customs about the best timing for interments and best locations--in the
ancient feng shui tradition of creating a harmonious environment.
Adhering to these customs can overcome fears that moving a body may bring
a curse upon the family.
"Usually, both sides of governments are compassionate and understand
the situation," said funeral director Loyal Kwong. "Everybody has a father.
Everybody has a grandfather."
The U.S. Customs Service does not require the declaration of cremated
remains being brought into the country, said Mike Fleming, the agency's
Los Angeles-area spokesman. If drug smuggling is suspected, the urn might
be X-rayed, but Fleming could not recall any such recent incidents.