This photo has always been displayd high up near the ceiling of our living room.
It must have been taken only a few months after August 25, 1956.
In the middle sat Khun Piak's grandfather and grandmother.
The four ladies behind them were some of their daughters.
Khun Piak was the baby on the right, held by his mom. He was born on August 25, 1956.
The children sitting in the front row were Khun Piak's older sisters and brothers.
His only younger brother was not born yet when this photo was taken.
We did not know the Grands' names.
And none of us were curious enough to ask our relatives for these.
Today we went to visit Khun Piaks grands' graves at
Santikham Cemetery.
The grands were his mom's parents (in the photo above).
This Catholic cemetery was in Nakhon Pathom near Rose Garden, Suan Sampran.
Our last visit was more than 10 years ago. I went only that time, and my memory was quite vague.
His "memory" appeared in Khun Piak’s newsfeed on facebook.
That was why Khun Piak wanted to visit.
Had thought it an easy task.
Turned out to be an adventure :
Looking for “lost” ancestors
- under the tropical summer midday heat.
The drive from Bang Na was ok although Khun Piak needed some navigation to boost his self confidence.
Can't blame him. He had been so used to having a driver for almost 5 years already.
We eventually arrived, but had to find the door to the graveyard.
The premises was HUGE - with a catholic school or schools.
The cemetery could not be seen from the street outside, and we wondered if this was the place we were supposed to visit.
Holidays and the gates were closed. Locked. The place was almost empty.
We spent quite a while finding a gate that could allow us in.
Finally we got to one gate that had two guards nearby. We asked them.
Thank goodness they immediately opened the gate for us.
Yay! We could get in now.
Wow! Very very beautiful inside. Very exotic, too: as if this were not in Thailand.
In the photos above: Ken, me, Tony, and Khun Piak.
Next was to find the graves.
Turned out the slot numbers we got from Khun Piak's brother were wrong : different family names and totally unfamiliar faces.
Other slots with similar numbers did not have anything familiar. They were all strangers.
There were newer "uninhabited" slots, too. Anyways, we found nothing that we could immediately relate to our ancestors.
OK.... Where are our Grands????
Khun Piak phoned his two brothers for advice.
No luck. One brother knew only the outdated info, the other knew nothing.
Great again, ha!
But at least we were assured that we had come to the right cemetery.
The four of us walked past many rows of the headstones trying to search for two white ones in pair
- the same as what we saw in facebook memory.
Most headstones were black, a few were other colors, and only very few were white.
It seemed there were thousands of the graves and the sun was above us.
Weather Bureau has just announced that today (Feb 27, 2021) was the beginning of our summer.
It was
scorching....
We continued going from zone to zone, from rows to rows.
But obviously there was no way we could locate them easily.
I did not know there were this many Catholic people in Thailand!
In an empty zone there were a few cows (yes, cows!) of different colors grazing.
The
green grass
looked nice.
The cows stopped and stared at Tony, who happened to wear a
red T-shirt
.
Yikes!
For safety reason we quickly got to our car and went back to the cemetery gate.
There, we noticed an announcement about moving the graves to “condo” or "flat" starting in Jan 2021.
Maybe the Grands had been moved. too.
But no one was around to give us the much needed info.
Our boys then checked the graveyard’s website.
Guess what?
They found the site had good data base!
Ken said : "Time to use the programmers’ skill."
I told my boys I remembered Grandma’s maiden name was Lim, and that was all I knew.
Ok, Lim.
And the headshots from the FB memory.
That was all we had.
Using their mobiles, our boys began searching in the data base for "Lim".
Immediately they told me there were hundreds of the Lims in this cemetery.
Well,.... of course!
(“陳林滿天下” - Old Chinese saying :
"The Chens and the Lins - or the Lims - are all over the world.")
(Oh no.... )
Tony began checking from the top of the data page. Ken tried from the bottom row.
Fortunately after only a short while (thank god!)
they found a Lim with the same headshot!
Yayyy!
See this at the Cemetery's data page
Tony and Ken's Greatgrands had really been moved from the old slots to the condo* !
We finally found them!!
* Later on we learned that the Cemetery called these small slots "FLAT",
which were different from bigger-sized slots that they named "CONDO".
The Thai language can be so elegant!
My translation (English):
Thanks to Cousin Chen Li-Er (陳麗兒) for the names in Chinese.
It was our very first time to know their names.
Grandma Morisco Ngak-sia TANG was Grandpa Paolo Hiang LIM's first wife,
and the biological mother of their first three daughters,
including my mother-in-law, who was the youngest of the three.
Grandma Morisco passed away when my MIL was just a toddler.
MIL's two older sisters had been married and were not included in the family photo on
top of this page.
I had thought Morisco a very interesting choice of the (Christian?) name.
I could not help wondering why the church had chosen this name.
(It reminded me of
the Moriscos in Spain.)
We decided to visit them more often.
Khun Piak's younger brother told us afterwards that there were
6 ancestors in this cemetery, and not just 3.
Now this is very, very interesting!
Who were the other three?
Notes:
I first posted this to
my FB
on Feb 27, 2021.
Edited and posted to neocites.org in Apr, 2021,
during the worsening COVID-19 and PM2.5-infested Songkran break.
- Next: Our
second visit
to Santikham Cemetery on March 6, 2021
- After that : Holy Rosary Church
(re)visited on March 13, 2021
View the photos at my Google Album :
Santikham 2021 Feb27