Looks like Mai Vang made the right decision by going the "plane ticket" route

[theking]

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Through grief, Hmong families torn between honoring the dead, keeping loved ones safe during COVID

Traditional Hmong funerals often carry on for days as loved ones send the deceased into the afterlife

Mai Vang suspects her father contracted COVID-19 from a funeral.

Vang and her family believe that traditional Hmong funerals are some of the most important rituals in their culture. Honoring the dead must be done with the utmost respect — and often involves loved ones gathering for days or even weeks to send the soul on its journey back to the ancestors.

But COVID-19 has made all of that challenging, and now Vang and her family have had to grapple with how to fulfill their obligations to their father — who died of the virus earlier this month — without turning his funeral this weekend into a coronavirus hot spot.

“My dad, he had tried so hard to stay alive,” she said. “He said he won’t go anywhere. He hardly [went] anywhere; he pretty much just stayed in one place.”

“And just that one event took my dad away.”

...Her husband, Chai Xiong, said the new protocols have shortchanged the practices that tradition requires.

“Before, we would do the ceremony, each step by step to make sure the person is spiritually got sent back to where they came from. And now it’s almost like, ‘Here is a plane ticket. Go,’” Xiong said.

..Several family members have already contracted the virus and others are testing regularly, which eases some of their concerns about gathering. The family is also advising some of the funeral attendees to eat in their cars.

Vang is also imploring her guests to tell their elders to stay home.

“Because once they go, you will never see them again, it will be too late,” she said through tears. “Every day I look at my dad’s picture and I just know that it will never be the same.”