Death to Individualism: Tongan grief and togetherness

Since my grandmother Lupe’s death in November 2023, I’ve been collecting different experiences of people’s grief and have found great comfort in its universality. There are endless books, movies, songs, that capture the one guarantee we are afforded in life: people die, and those that love them, miss them. So I cried to Korean-American author Michelle Zauner’s memoir “Crying in H Mart”, relating to her mourning her mother before she even died. Desperately, I briefly turned to religion, listening to Elvis’ gospel albums, skimming through generic “Christians Grieve, Too” pamphlets. I watched Kamilaroi writer Nakkiah Lui visit her late grandmother’s home in St Marys and made myself cry about my grandma as well as the incompetence of the DCJ. More recently, I watched acclaimed Australian journalist Ray Martin’s SBS documentary series, “The Last Goodbye”, which explored the ‘taboo’ of death among Australians.

As a Tongan, I’ve found this collective aversion to death in the West quite unrelatable. I’ve been to more funerals than weddings. I mustn’t have even been 10 when I first saw a dead body, and I distinctly remember being in line to kiss my dead cousin goodbye in his coffin when I was 13. This exposure to death, through culture, ceremony, community, prepared me, in some small way, for my own grandmother’s death.

Despite our efforts to protect Lupe from injury in her old age, shielding her from the inevitable, and, by extension, us, the heartache from the inevitable, she died after falling at home. Stuck in hospital for almost a week, the pain had taken her long before death did. She winced all the time, hurting all over, the morphine sitting uselessly in her body. We were grateful that she was asleep most of the time, seeing it as her body’s way of giving her respite from the pain, knowing she’ll cease to feel anything at all, soon. In the hours that she was awake, she would tell us that her mother, Lolohea, was sitting at her feet on the hospital bed. We knew she would be leaving us soon then. We joked about that with her, saying that if she sees a ship coming she needs to hop on it, and that we would be okay when she goes. Death didn’t feel as confronting because we accepted it, welcomed it, laughed at it together, as Tongans usually do.

When Lupe passed, there wasn’t anything about her being dead that we didn’t want to see, or anything about the process that we didn’t want to be a part of. The nurse that had come to take Lupe’s body to the morgue patiently waited for us to stop kissing her and crying on her.  She politely asked us to leave the room so that she could take her, telling us that it’s not pleasant for us as her family to see her in this way. She didn’t want us to see her zipped into a plastic bag. We didn’t want to see her away from us. 

I wasn’t able to go to the funeral home to help prepare Lupe for her funeral, but my mum went with her cousins. They combed her thin grey hair, adorned her with oil and perfume that I swear I can still smell around the house. My mum video-called me in tears, showing me Lupe dressed in her white suit, her long nails that I painted red just a few days ago in the hospital. I remembered the sweet acetone smell of the polish that filled the room as I blew air onto her hands, drying her nails. With her hand still in mine, I laughed hearing one of the nurses telling her colleague that Lupe’s family are “constantly here.” Where else were we supposed to be, I wanted to say. 

The news of Lupe’s death spread quickly, and everyday that week our house saw several groups of people over. So many people came to honour her, as our tradition teaches us to. After the hymns and the prayers we all knew the words to, our families and friends, swallowed in their ta’ovala, spilled out of our small living room and onto our driveway. My cousins and I handed out plastic trays of Costco sandwiches and muffins and cases of soft drink which people quickly shoved into the boots of their cars. Guests passed around the kettles of instant coffee, clouds of steam rising from their styrofoam cups as they drank them. People stayed over, crashing anywhere they could, always wanting to help. My mum and her cousins kicked it on the fala in the living room, chatting for hours into the night, ready to do it all again tomorrow. 

During the day, in preparation for her funeral, we helped pull out Lupe’s ngatu from her shed, marvelling at the dark painted kupesi against the soft mulberry sheets. It’s hard work, and as a child I did everything to avoid helping Lupe take out her pile of koloa when we had good weather. A dreaded chore among every Tongan the world over, you must take out the ngatu regularly, lay them flat upon the grass, let them dry out under the sun like laundry. This is how we preserve it, how we make it ready for each other. 

I had been to a number of ‘ave hala ceremonies, but in the week of my grandmother’s death, this was my first time being on the receiving end of them. I have sat cross-legged and barefoot in the hallways and entryways in the homes of cousins, my mum’s classmates, people that died but I didn’t know the name of. Under careful instructions by older Tongan women, I’ve given envelopes of money to bereaved families. I’ve carried ngatu, quilts, and decorative baskets with paua shells super-glued on them into the living rooms of strangers. 

Suddenly it’s my and Lua’s turn to receive these people, this koloa, these envelopes. We sit quietly, humbly accepting everything, earnestly thanking them in a way we learned through watching our elders in these gatherings and live-streams recorded by Paula Moimoi on YouTube. Surrounded by family, church members, and friends, I did not know whether my tears were for my grandma, for our community showing up for us, or for how close we all were in that week. 

Almost a year on from Lupe’s death, I still can’t stop thinking about the closeness of Tongans. The constant need to be together, to do things together, and how it is imperative we are this way. In her debut novel, ‘Dirt Poor Islanders’, Tongan-Australian writer, Winnie Dunn, writes that togetherness is what it means to be Tongan. I’ve never questioned this. I’ve only been grateful for it. It has always made perfect sense to me that our families should come together to consolidate how much money we’ll give away in an envelope, or on a tekiteki. Of course we must tie each other’s ta’ovala in the driveway before entering a grieving family’s home, or the parking lot of a church, or a restaurant. Of course we must carry the ngatu, feel its physical and metaphorical weight on us when we’re celebrating life, or when we’re commemorating death. Together. 

It didn’t make the loss any less devastating, but the togetherness of Tongans grounded me in the most destabilising, depressing year of my life. There isn’t a moment in my life that hasn’t been defined by the closeness of Tongans. Their kindness, their relationality, their ‘ofa. Our family friend offered to reserve burial plots in her name at our local cemetery so it would cost us less. Our cousins cancelled shifts at work to be with us each day in the week that Lupe died. Above all, Lupe lived with us, cleaned us, fed us, and loved us, from our first breaths until her very last. How else are we to be if not together? 

It’s in these moments that make me so grateful that I will never be able to speak to the Western experience of death and grief.  In a society where individualism is pervasive, our love for one another, our duty to each other in both life and death, must be the standard. Being a part of a culture where service and responsibility is embedded in our identities, I will always be unimpressed and unconvinced by the notion that we don’t owe anything to each other. In the past year, my personal loss, compounded by the substantial loss of life in Palestine, has reiterated to me that at the end of the day, we only have each other.

We owe each other humanity, compassion, love, we owe each other community.  

Closeness, to Tongans, isn’t just about physical proximity. For even hundreds of kilometres away did we feel our community’s ‘ofa for us, for Lupe. Instead, it refers to actions, our intentions for each other. Grief is hard but Tongans love and show up harder. It is a reality I wish for everyone, in life and in death.

1. ta’ovala:  A woven mat worn by Tongans around the waist on special occasions 

2. tekiteki: a headpiece worn when performing Tongan dances, usually featuring cash that is given to an honoured person at an event

3. fala:  A traditional floor mat

4. ngatu:  Cloth made from beaten mulberry bark. A sign of cultural wealth

5. kupesi:  Designs, motifs, painted on the ngatu

6. koloa:  Ngatu, among other cultural materials fulfil Tongan customs and traditions

7. 'ave hala: A funeral custom where relatives, friends, community members, present gifts to the bereaved family as a sign of respect and love

8. 'ofa: love