Supposedly, it can sometimes even lead to the spirit causing someone else to kill themselves. An essential part of the mourning process is the three daily meals prepared by the men in the family. At each meal the ceremonial dish, "laig dab" that is composed of pork and rice, is offered to the deceased body by the eldest son, while the reed pipe instrument, called the "qeej", plays a ceremonial song (Tapp 84). Another offering made to the spirit of the deceased is a daily animal sacrifice. Traditionally, the sacrifice has been a pig, bulls, and oxen. (Falk, par. 12). Once the offerings have been finished a lamp is lit on the dead body and male relatives retreat outside to fire three shots into the air to scare any evil spirits that may attack the house during this time of turmoil (“Death”). Reincarnation is a pillar of the Hmong faith. During the ceremonies it is culturally taboo to show distress, as the ceremony is not about the death of the person but the rebirth of the soul and a new life (Goetz, par. 12). The main reason the funeral rituals are performed is so that the dead will be reborn into the same family. If the rituals are not performed properly the Hmong fear that the soul will be punished by returning as a lesser form or in a different family (Tapp 84). One ritual that must be completed is the payment of the deceased debts. Any debts unpaid are thought to negatively impact the living family along with the deceased party (“Death”). In the Hmong culture a death is an extremely important event. The burial process must be performed correctly in order to protect those living and the deceased from evil spirits that are present when there is a death. The first step in burial is sacrificing a number of oxen that are prepared by the descendants of the deceased for a feast that the entire village partakes in to pay homage to the dead (“Death”). Once the body is prepared for its journey it is positioned on a table with items that will be necessary for the voyage into the afterlife. “A bottle of alcohol and a cooked chicken in the two halves of a gourd, together with a boiled egg, a crossbow, a knife and a paper umbrella, will be placed by the head of the corpse” (Tapp 83). An initiatic poem, “Showing The Way” (White), is sung to help the soul on the journey to the afterlife.