Corpses

 Katrinka and I went to the nearby Santrian Hotel for a BIWA meeting late this afternoon. BIWA is Bali International Women's Association. There were about thirty women and four husbands. I was brought along because the purpose of the meeting was to talk about what to do, what needs to be done, if one or both of us died. It's most common for someone to die and the surviving partner to not know what to do, not have access to bank accounts, passwords. Those present were mainly women from Australia. Indonesian women know what to do. One thing we learned is you've got to call the police right away. Any delay can put one under suspicion. And an ambulance can't take away the body without a certificate from the police. There was talk of burial, cremation, insurance, how the Aussie consulate won't be much help, all sorts of stuff. Toward the end I asked what about those who want to keep the body for a day or two or three. The woman running the meeting seemed confused by that question. I said there are those who want the body to stay at home for people to come and be with. A lot of Japanese do that. I've been to Japanese homes to visit what was once someone I knew. It's a Jewish tradition. Not a Muslim one at all. I said we were Buddhists and a lot of Buddhists we knew in America follow that practice. A Chinese Indonesian woman, Sari, a former president of BIWA further explained the practice and said people in Bali were quite comfortable with it. She mentioned ice. I said I know people who've used frozen pea bags - no melt to deal with. I said one thing that's important is having someone around who knows how to prepare a body for lying around for a few days as they tend to run away so to speak. I'm going to talk with our landlord and with the Buddhist priest who officiated at our wedding, Katrinka's going to contact her friend Kim, a midwife and nurse practitioner who wrote about this for a local rag. And we should make sure we each have the other's passwords etc and have crossed our T's and dotted our J's. I'll let you know what we learn.