The Belongings of the Departed

In Vietnam, in the north, people hold that everything belonging to someone who has died must be burnt. This may be a folk belief, along with the stories people tell of the dead coming back to ask for the things that were not burnt. I did try to look for sources, and I have not yet found Buddhism saying anything in particular about this rite.

I asked grandma and my aunt to let me keep grandma’s headscarf, her jacket and her Buddhist bracelet. If grandma wants them back, I am sure she will find a way to let me know!

These past days I have been thinking again of a video that moved me very, very much.

The video “THE CLOTHES SHE DESIGNS MAKE PEOPLE CRY”

This excerpt starts at 0:56; you can turn on the English or Chinese subtitles, or the automatic translation.

The clothes we wear
carry experiences and memories from the past
I remember it was in 2012
that Tongtong came to find me
She said: “My mother has just passed away”
“Could you
take the clothes my mother wore while she was alive
and sew them into a new set of clothes?”
“I miss my mother so much, and I want to be beside her always”
…
So I chose 7 garments
among them a knitted waistcoat
a woollen coat
and a flower-print shirt
I joined a piece of each of the 7 garments into a single outer coat
I made the inner sleeves out of the knitwear
and made a patch on each sleeve out of the printed floral panel from the front of the shirt
I said to her, “When you raise your arm
you will see the flowers from your mother’s shirt”
I also kept the old embroidered labels from the old uniforms
When Tongtong looked at the finished coat, she broke down like a child
One day she said to me
“Nana, today my younger brother and I went to visit our mother’s grave”
“I wore this coat. Thank you!”

Reclothing Bank is a label founded by Zhang Na, an independent fashion designer in Shanghai. Reclothing means remaking and redesigning old cloth. Bank means a place where certain old materials are stored, circulated and exchanged. The guiding idea of Reclothing Bank is to bring new life to old, discarded fashion materials and to make new pieces, so that fashion is reborn.

https://youtu.be/hxowHgbmMQQ?si=8FQpiT0k-gQYB_eL