Mourners at Wat Rat Samakee, a temple in Naklang, Thailand, on Saturday. Photo / Andre Malerba, The New York Times
The town of Uthai Sawan in Thailand, a Buddhist-majority country, began formally mourning the victims of a mass killing at a day care centre, most of them children.
There were so many coffins — 19 in all — that they lined an entire wall of the Wat Rat Samakee temple. A long white string, a Buddhist symbol of purity and protection, ran across their tops. Placed around each coffin were items to carry the young children into the afterlife: a Spiderman outfit, a plush kitty, juice boxes, grilled pork and toy trucks, many of them.
The town of Uthai Sawan on Saturday started formally mourning their dead, 36 of them. Twenty-three were children in a day care centre who died Thursday when a former police officer shot and stabbed them in a rampage. There was Asia, 3, who loved cycling and was allowed to ride his bike inside his house. Lying several coffins away was Daen, 4, who loved Matchbox cars.
Uthai Sawan is a rural town of about 6,000 in northeastern Thailand. The funerals had to be split across three temples. Monks from neighbouring provinces travelled to the town to help with the funeral rites. On Saturday morning, the framed photograph of Athibodin Silumtai, whom everyone called Asia, was still not ready because there was only one photo shop in town, said Khamphong Silumtai, his great-aunt.
"It just feels like this is not his time to go," said Khamphong, 46. "He is too young and too innocent. He was gone too soon.
"What we can do now is to make merits so he will leave in peace and his spirit can leave comfortably," she added.
Thailand is a majority-Buddhist country, where the faithful believe that making merits, or doing good deeds, is essential for the deceased to live well in the afterlife. Funerals are often carried out with that goal in mind. In the north, they can be colourful affairs, with coffins placed on a float decorated with lights and flowers — what the Thais call a "castle" for the afterlife — and then paraded through the streets to the cremation site.
Keeping the spirits happy is extremely important in a country where the belief in the supernatural dominates. Khamphong, who raised her grandnephew, placed his favourite foods and beverage near his coffin: grilled pork and sticky rice, clear soup with pork and an orange juice box.
Malisa Yodkhao, 29, said she bought her son, Thawatchai (called Daen) Sriphu, a bicycle and a remote-control car along with some other toy cars — new things that he had always wanted. She also placed toy figures of Spiderman and Hulk on top of the coffin.
"We won't take them back home because they will be cremated with him," she said.
At the funerals Saturday afternoon, a long line of people came to pay their respects to the little children. They poured water from a silver cup into a large silver bowl that was placed in front of the children's coffins, marking the first ritual in a Thai Buddhist funeral called the bathing ceremony.
Usually, the ceremony involves having relatives pour scented water over the deceased's right hand and then placing the hands on the chest. By doing this, the Buddhists believe, a loved one can help cleanse the body and ask for forgiveness. Then white string is tied around the wrists and ankles or the deceased. The monks take the ends of the string placed over the coffin — a symbol connecting the monks to the dead — and chant Buddhist prayers.
"The bathing ceremony is a tradition that been done and passed on," said Phra Winai Suntharo, a monk who came to help with the rites Saturday. "It is the same as when you go to bed, you need to clean yourself off, then you change your clothes. It's a belief that when someone leaves to go to the next world, they need to clean and change into new clothes."
Phra Winai, who has been ordained for 24 years, said he travelled to Uthai Sawan from nearby Loei province to see if he could help the monks out. He said he has carried out funeral rites for young children who died by drowning or in accidents, but "never anything like this."
"This is such a tragedy," Phra Winai said. But, he said, the tenets of Buddhist teaching are that life is a cycle involving birth, aging, suffering and death.
"Look at nature: When a tree gives fruit, the fruit does not always ripen." he said. "The young fruit can fall when there's wind," he added. "Life is so unpredictable and uncertain. We can't do anything with this uncertainty."
The body of the gunman, Panya Kamrab, was cremated in Udon Thani, roughly 90 minutes away by car, on Saturday after no temple in the Nong Bua Lumphu province was willing to carry out his last rites, local news media reported.
"Why do we say we won't take him?" Maha Boonho Sukkamo, the abbot of the Sri Uthai temple, told The Reporters, a local news website, on Friday. "This is because the two communities have a resolution that he was vile."
The abbot said that the families "do not want the body of such a person" to be among their loved ones.
On Saturday, the families in Uthai Sawan were still trying to come to grips with the tragedy, the deadliest mass shooting in Thailand carried out by a single perpetrator. Grieving family members hugged and cried as they struggled to cope with the loss.
Khamphong raised her grandnephew, Asia, because his father is an agricultural worker in Israel. She was there at his birth and decided with his mother that he should have the nickname Asia, because Thailand was part of the continent. His cousin, Asean, was born in the same month and went to the same day care centre. He died, too.
She said Asia loved telling her about his friends and teacher at the day care, which he had just joined in May. He called her "Grandma" and would sometimes jokingly call her "Fatty."
"I have lost someone who always talks to me," she said. "I hugged and kissed him every morning and every evening. And he's gone. I cannot come to terms with it."
Malisa, who is eight months pregnant, remembered her son, Daen, as a lively and happy child who loved to sing along with "Eaew Lan Pad," a catchy Thai pop tune that has gone viral on TikTok for the videos of children flossing and twerking.
She started crying as she recalled how she used to ask him if he wanted a sister or brother, and he said he wanted a brother so they could play together. She said she hopes his teacher — who was eight months pregnant and also killed by the gunman — "will guide him and take care of him in heaven."
Recalling her last moments with Daen, Malisa said she had dropped him off at the day care centre Thursday morning.
"He took his shoes off and turned around to wave goodbye to me," she said. "He had never done that before."
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Sui-Lee Wee and Ryn Jirenuwat
Photographs by: Andre Malerba
© 2022 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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