From The Letters Page

[Highwayman]

In todays Nation newspaper:

Shocked at lack of empathy for the bereaved at funeral.

I have to admit that I am not in a good mood right now. I have discovered a lack of empathy, a lack of humanity, which is for me simply outrageous!

Let me ask this: if you where in charge of a funeral set to begin at 2pm and the widow wasn’t able to show up at that exact time because of a traffic jam, would you then say to the others gathered around you, who are mainly members of the widow’s family, “I don’t care. 2 o’clock is 2 o’clock. We start the ceremony now. Cremate the man!”

No? Me neither. But that’s what happened last Wednesday. The daughter of my good friend from Ubon Ratchathani lost her husband after only two and a half weeks of marriage, due to an abrupt heart attack which took his life.

He was only 44 years old. They had been together for about two years and were very happy. She is in her sixth month of pregnancy. They looked forward to establishing a family. The couple had planned for some time how he could move to Thailand and stay with his beloved wife. He was talking about becoming an English teacher, as he is – was, I mean to say – an Australian and therefore very fit to teach students in English.

My wife, from the same village as the widow, and I arrived a bit too late, too. Due to a traffic jam, of course. We sat down with the widow, regretting that we didn’t make it. I was angry at myself for not having left our flat half an hour earlier.

It was then that I learnt, from the gruesome crying of the widow, that a person from the Australian Embassy had, despite protests from the widow’s family and even from one of his own personnel, a Thai citizen, forced the personnel at the temple to perform the ceremony and start burning the body.

All of the widow’s family, except the widow herself, was present.

So a Thai widow, who had just experienced a shock that others can’t imagine, isn’t entitled to have funeral rites for her husband postponed for half an hour?

The lack of humanity, empathy and emotional intelligence was shocking, and still is.

Who would start a ceremony before the most important participants have arrived, whether it is a funeral or a wedding?

[Highwayman]

There are of course two sides to every story but if true surely someone at the Australian Embassy should be brought to task over this. It's possible to read a number of things into this account but l still find it hard to believe that anyone could be so callous.

In such a case, is the embassy official in charge of such a funeral able to overide the considerations of everyone else present? I would have thought a spouse would be the person everyone would defer to rather than an embassy official and if the spouse was late everyone would have the decency to wait, even an embassy official. It's not like we're talking about a business appointment or sporting event.

Edited November 6, 2005 by Highwayman

[ThaiPauly]

Absolutley disgusting.

[sbk]

You are assuming they were legally married. If they weren't then, yes, the embassy would have authority over the funeral unless of course, an immediate family member from home was attending.

[astral]

Seems a bit strange to me.

All the Thai funerals I have attended went on for several days!!

[dutch]

Burning process is at the LAST day of the ceremonies.

[Thomas_Merton]

You are assuming they were legally married. If they weren't then, yes, the embassy would have authority over the funeral unless of course, an immediate family member from home was attending.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It might help, if the OP could explain why the Embassy figure was there in the first place.

Also who was paying for (what in my experience is usually a private family affair) this funeral?

If the funeral was being paid for by the Embassy - then why?

Was the official representing the unfortunate man's Australian family's interests?

Interest that, quite correctly in his mind, were better served by a prompt start to the proceedings rather than waiting for a widow who could not arrive on time and obliging a family that could, or would not, pay for the funeral.