What a surprise!
Who were they? What were their names?
Too curious, and we decided to revisit the place on March 6, 2021.
This time with an appointment.
Saturday March 6, 2021
The trip was smooth and we quickly came to our ancestors' "FLAT" at Santikham Cemetery.
How nice! This time there was a tent!
Actually it was because the day before our visit a (blessing or memorial ?) ritual was held at this spot.
The Cemetery office was in this building:
We had already been told that Father was away this morning,
but we could talk to the persons at the office.
It was one of them that had assured us that we had 6 ancestors rested here at Santikham Cemetery.
The office was cozy and the people in there were friendly.
We asked our questions and they kindly answered us.
Below was the screenshot of the excel data from their computer.
Each section started with a row of the person in charge's details.
I blurred out the address and phone number boxes.
We recognized the PIC's name: Sirinan Phatipatanawong.
She was Grandpa Lim's youngest daughter.
Sadly Auntie Sirinan (a.k.a. "Aunt 6") passed away around Christmas in 2010.
May her soul rest in peace.
There were three sections on this data page :
- First one showed Maria Sung-Kim TANG, our step Grandma.
- Second had Paolo Hiang LIM and
Morisco Ngak-sia TANG, our Grandpa and Grandma,
- The bottom one had three names:
- Marco Sia-Tek TANG,
- Rosa Sri HENG, and
- John Baptista Jiu-Kuang TANG.
These were what we had not known.
The three were next to our Grands :
All the six graves, together with many hundreds, had been moved from "Kalawar Church"
to Santikham Cemetery in the Buddhist Year of 2536, or A.D. 1993,
just before the Thai government expropriated the cemetery land in Kalawar Church.
(Source: Santikham history.)
Gradually, as the new cemetery accepted more and more graves, space had to be even better managed.
Traditional graves became double-depth burial space,
and many old graves were moved to the "condo" and "flat" that took up much less land space.
We were told that the relocations were done mostly after the permissions from the families.
But in our case the sole PIC of the family passed away long ago without any successor,
and the Cemetery could not notify any of us.
The Cemetery could not wait forever and they finally decided to move our ancestors' graves.
We came after the move.
That was why we could not locate our Grands' graves when we visited on Feb 27.
But it was good to know that every relocation was carried out with great care and with full set of the rituals.
Khun Piak volunteered to take up the role of PIC for these ancestors.
From now on we could receive notifications from Santikham.
Khun Piak immediately paid the maintenance fee, which was actually not a large sum.
We even donated some more for the good care and religious services.
But it saddened us a bit when we knew that Santikham did not have our ancestors' history
(of the birth, baptism, marriage, etc).
All these records were still kept at Kalawar Church, said the cemetery people.
We would love to go to Kalawar Church and do some research,
but as it was so far a way from Santikham,
this would have to be done next Saturday.
I searched the internet and found this:
Wow!
Maybe this explained why our ancestors' Christian names
(written in Thai) had the pronunciations that sounded so European and un-English.
I remembered many years ago whenever cruising Chao Phraya River
we could see a magnificent western-style church-like building.
I did not know what it was. Now I knew.
Time to say hello to all our 6 ancestors -
although we were still not sure what to call the other three :
were they our great grands, or granduncles and grandaunt?
Two males' last names were TANG, the same as our two Grandmas.
but TANG (or Chen in Mandarin) was (and still is) one of the very common Chinese last names.
The three ancestors must have been very ancient,
possibly more ancient than Grandpa LIM :
the DOB and DOD did not appear on any of their headstones,
and two of them did not even have headshots.
The Catholic people told us that flowers and candles would be good for the visits :
candles were essential, but the incenses that were always used in Buddhist temples were not necessary.
We therefore bought from the cemetery office a few pairs of the candles and a lighter.
The candles came in very neat small glasses.
Hello, Grandpa, Grandma, and one more Grandma, and the three ancestors!
While we were still in front of our ancestors' flat, there came a couple to the same area.
The lady gracefully made the sign of the cross before she stepped near.
We then greeted and talked for a while.
The couple came to pay a visit to the lady's mom, who stayed on top floor of this "flat".
They visited often, she said.
She added more flowers, candles, food, and drink for her mom.
Her family had reserved an empty space next to her mom's, she told us.
Very nice to meet the offsprings of our ancestors' "neighbors"!
The couple assured us again that the Church had the old records.
They encouraged us to go and research.
They actually had done so, too, to make sure what her mom's Christian name was.
One more must-go place for us!
The Church at Santikham had the name literally translated as "Church of Jesus Christ Ascending Heaven":
Notes:
First Visit (Feb 27, 2021)
- Posted to my FB,
- Edited and added to my site here on Apr 14, 2021.
After this :
- Holy Rosary Church (re)visited on March 13, 2021
View the photos at my Google Album :
Santikham 2021 Feb27,
Santikham 2021 Mar06