Requiem For a Thai King

My wife was born and raised in Thailand. For seventy years, the Thai people revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej as a veritable demigod. He died last October, and Thais have mourned his passing ever since. This includes those who live outside Thailand. My wife has lived in the U.S. since 2001, and she has mourned her king probably as much as most people inside or outside Thailand.

Today the late king's remains were cremated near Bangkok's Grand Palace. This marked the culmination of a spectacularly lavish funeral ceremony which drew hundreds of thousands to the ceremony itself and millions more throughout Thailand and the world to sites where they could gather to pay final respects to the king.

My wife accompanied several from her local Thai Buddhist temple and a thousand or more other people from the Bay Area and beyond to attend one such event last night outside San Francisco City Hall. Judging from her accounts and from photos and videos published on social media, it was a solemnly beautiful, candlelit affair brimming with emotion I can only begin to imagine, since I did not grow up under a king who served as the spiritual father and cultural glue of my own homeland.

However, I do feel some vicarious grief from the mourning of the Thai people for their king. And I take some poignant pleasure in being able to modestly share in their and my wife's powerful experience of loss. A vital part of being a human inhabiting this earth is feeling intense grief and tenderness toward those communally sharing our grief with us. Perhaps the closest thing in my own prior experience to partaking in this magnitude of communal grief came in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

This, at least for the time being, supersedes my reservations against venerating monarchs and against the fearsomely harsh laws in Thailand prohibiting even the faintest intimation of insult directed at the king or royal family. It also overshadows, for now, my concerns about the potential unrest if not worse that could consume Thailand after being held in abeyance for the past year by the official mourning period.

That period officially ended today. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? I'll worry about that "tomorrow," but not today.

Rambo House

In the late 1980's, an exciting stickfighting scene between John Rambo and his opponent in a ring in Thailand was featured in the movie Rambo III. This scene has special significance for my wife and her family because it was filmed at her house in Bangkok where she grew up. Her family still owns the property, although most of them no longer live there. However, they continue to call it the "Rambo House."

The scene took several days to set up and film, requiring modifications to be made to the building, where my wife's family business built boats, in which the fight took place. After the fight, Rambo gets on a boat and heads up the river from the same spot from which my wife used to travel almost every day to school or work.

Of course, my wife's family was paid for the use of their property, and they certainly enjoyed having the biggest movie star in the world at that time filming a major motion picture in their yard. Below is almost the complete scene, courtesy of the miraculous resource YouTube.

The Thai Smile

My wife is now on a plane heading from Thailand to San Francisco.

Thailand is called the "land of smiles." The Thai people are renowned for their beautiful smiles. And my experience with Thai people both here and in Thailand tells me that their reputation is well-deserved. But some people take it a little too far.

She's Coming Home, And I Still Miss Him

My wife will be returning from Thailand Monday. I'll be picking her up at SFO in the afternoon and driving her back home here in Sacramento. She spent three weeks in Thailand at her family's home in Ayutthaya with brief stays in Bangkok and Hua Hin. I wish I could have gone with her. But I had to stay home and work and take care of our two cats.

We used to have three cats. But then I had to have my oldest cat, Smokey, put down recently. I still miss him, especially when I see photos like the one above that was taken a little more than a year ago in our backyard with my lovely sister-in-law. I've loved all of my cats, but Smokey was special.

I wish Smokey were still here. I loved him. And even though he was an old guy, he still took some great pictures. He lives on in those pictures and in my heart.

I'm glad my wife was able to spend these three weeks with her family in her beloved Thailand. But I also miss her, and I'll be happy to have her back here with me and our two "boys."