Last Fri­day, we had to bury my grandma who died on the 23rd of August aged 85. Every­body includ­ing me was glad that she finally left this world after some years of suf­fer­ing. I wasn’t there in the end but every fam­ily mem­ber agreed that it’s good her suf­fer­ing finally stopped. Of course, I too am glad it’s over. The funeral was really some­thing, though. Lots of peo­ple and lots of flow­ers. I didn’t blend into the whole cer­e­mony although I played my part almost to per­fec­tion. It wasn’t much, just read­ing some sort of cur­ricu­lum vitae, which took me no more than four minutes.

From the very begin­ning I noticed how much I’ve changed and how much I resent some cus­toms still pop­u­lar with the peo­ple. But there has been a … shift in why peo­ple are cling­ing to their cus­toms. The old ones truly believe in what they do and there’s no deny­ing them. The younger peo­ple still fol­low the rules but only because it is expected. Some do not even believe in the things they do and say and oth­ers pick one or two suit­able things out of the whole crop and believe in them while dis­re­gard­ing the rest. As you can imag­ine, I did stick out because I stood apart. I had the guts to break with some cus­toms, thanks to my liv­ing apart from the peo­ple in my village.

For a sec­ond I thought about pleas­ing them, pre­tend­ing to be one of them. I dis­missed the thought shortly after because by doing so I’d for­ever be the grand­son of her. The son of my par­ents. I’d always have been mea­sured by their stan­dards and they wouldn’t have seen me as the per­son I am but rather the per­son I should be in their eyes. Stand­ing up to them by pub­licly demon­strat­ing that I honor their cus­toms but in the same time prov­ing that they aren’t mine meant much to me. Accord­ing to the sub­tle change in the peo­ple talk­ing to me, I did suc­ceed. I’m sad that it took such an occa­sion to make them understand.