Happy Mother's Day!

Hey everyone, I hope you all treated your mother to something special today.

For Mother's day, I went with my family and a few relatives to visit my grandparents on my mother's side at the cemetery. It's actually been my first time to see their gravestones since their passing. My mom always brought flowers and soil, but I got to see first hand what they do every year for Mother's day (and I suspect it's not that different for Father's day). I asked my mom to guide me through what my sister and I should be doing to properly pay respects. I should mention that I'm half-Chinese, and that half comes from my mom. 

First, we had to pray by putting our hands together and bowing 2 times before the prayer, say a little something in spirit, and then bow 2 more times when done. Then, my 2 uncles (out of many on my mom's side) started to pull out the old plants and put in the new flowers my mom and one of my uncles brought. After the planting was finished, we got incense sticks where each person, from oldest to youngest, would bow 3 times, say a little prayer in spirit, bow 3 times again, and put the incense sticks in front of the grave, in between the 2 sets of flowers just planted. I was the youngest one there, so I put my incense sticks in last. While the incense sticks were still burning, my aunt distributed what my sister calls "grave money" which are basically burnable paper that symbolize real money, gold bars, silver and gold in general. I received some of everything, but my sister noticed on the paper that had a similar design to dollar bills that it had a denomination of $50 million and it said something along the lines of "money for the other world". Basically, from oldest to youngest, we would put the grave money, one paper at a time, into a tin can and burn them so that my grandparents would have money in the other world to buy whatever they like. I told my sister that I didn't know the other side was so materialistic, but I know that it was symbolic, and a way to show that we still care for them even though they are no longer physically with us. I was so glad to be able to experience this at this time of my life. I'm graduating from university, and I feel more of an adult now as I'm moving on to the next step in life: getting a job in my field.

After visiting the cemetery, I went to celebrate Mother's day with my family at a restaurant. I would say it's a fancy restaurant, since everything was quite expensive. My family originally wanted to go to Dim Sum, but the restaurant we wanted to go to had a really long line up outside, so we decided to go somewhere else. The restaurant we went to in the end had really good food, and they also gave chocolates and flowers to my mom for Mother's day, which I thought was a nice touch. After, my sister and I gave my mom a card to remember the day by, and I think she enjoyed it very much.