I have to go to the cementery every New Year to pay tribute to all our ancestors, yeah, the old tradition. I have the most neutral feeling you could imagine, probably because I always go with my big family. The process is always the same: go to one grave, give the dead flowers, stay for a while chatting, give the dead’s “neighbors” flowers if we can, repeat until all graves are visited. Except for visiting the grave of my grandpa, I feel like the whole thing is a chore, mainly because I never go alone and have to follow the adults’ direction everywhere. Oh, and I have no real emotional connection to most of the ancestors too. I can never go alone though, the cementery is too far away.
If you feel too uncomfortable, can you bring another person with you? At the cementery, apart from listening to the adults’ chatting and yawn, I comfort my grandma on the way. She seems to be as distressed as you around the grave of my grandpa, and she loses it sometimes and cries when she sees his face on the grave. So I think if you are too uncomfortable, don’t force yourself to go alone. You can ask someone who understands you to go with you, at least for some emotional comfort. And if it makes you feel any better, give some flowers to the girl next to your friend.
While the adults busy chatting, I also have lots of fun figuring out the Chinese letters on the graves. Often they have the modern day’s reading under each letter, but in some cases there is none, and I love reading them from scratch like that. Usually the Chinese letters are about family and things like that, which are references to amcient moral teaching and things that I’m not so familiar with. So even with the reading below, it still takes brain power to understand the meaning. I find it a good leisure to pass the time.