[White Night Talk] Funerals in the cyber era are probably the best mirrors to reflect life

My family seems to be a bit special. I think it was because the policy of “late marriage and later childbearing” was implemented too well. My grandfather didn’t have my father until he was 30, and my father was 40 when I was born. So I am still a minor, and three of the four elderly people in my family have already passed away. Counting the relatives who died of cancer at an early age and the head teacher in high school, the funeral may have become a long-lasting memory that runs through me from childhood to adulthood.

When my grandmother died, I was only 3 years old. I had not even formed a real understanding of the world, and I was still in a state of ignorance about death. But I still remember that when I was still in my mother’s arms, I wanted to touch the corpse that was covered in red by the funeral director through the crystal coffin, as if it had fallen asleep.

I was 13 years old when my grandfather passed away, but as the only “straight grandson” in the family, I became the person standing on the back of the truck holding the portrait, and taking the old man all the way against the cold wind that was still not long after the New Year. towards the end of physical death.

The high school head teacher passed away at the age of 17. Our class is the only class in the school that has changed the head teacher. Everything happened suddenly – I heard the news of recovery before, but it was settled in less than half a year. What I vaguely remember is that after school, the whole class rushed to the mourning hall where the teacher lived to worship, and stood in a row along the road at the school gate the next day to watch the convoy.

Because of the generation gap and the lack of intersection in life, it is difficult for people to have any special feelings for their elders unless they are brought up by one hand. But life and death are impermanent, which is probably a feeling shared by everyone who has attended a funeral, even strangers, not to mention the death of many celebrities this year. It’s like my father mentioned to me that one of his friends hit the curb while riding his bike, knocked his head, and never woke up.

During the holidays, my father used his mobile phone to make a video call between my grandmother and me, who was separated by nearly half the world. However, in the Mid-Autumn Festival last year, he did not mention the old man to me, but simply cared about my current situation. Since then, I have been aware of something vaguely, and it has become one of the opportunities for me to return to China this year. Finally, as expected, I learned the news that the old man was hospitalized.

My grandmother only attended middle school for one year, and later worked as a primary school teacher for half her life. She often mentioned to me the school uniform in blue and black dress in that era, and even left a page of notes when I went abroad.

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“I hope you can learn your skills well on the basis of your original studies and have a bright future! Strive to create a better future! – Grandma’s blessing”

Maybe it’s because I’m the only grandchild left in the family who hasn’t started a family yet, or maybe it’s because I’m barely able to make a living, and the old man is not bad for me, the so-called “straight grandson”. The 90-year-old grandmother in front of the hospital bed grabbed my hand and talked about the wildfires and epidemics she saw on TV, how she worried about my safety, and kept repeating, “Just come back and stay with my parents in the future. “. However, according to relatives in charge of taking care of them, the elderly were extremely arrogant when they were hospitalized, and did not have the open-mindedness they should have in the age of the mackerel. They were often so noisy that the medical staff avoided them, and even refused treatment at one point, just because they were afraid that “they would take my bone marrow.” make medicine”.

This year’s Mid-Autumn Festival finally became the last meeting in this life. My grandmother could still sit up at home and complain that I should go “cut my hair, don’t imitate foreigners to have any personality.” After ten days, she put on a shroud in the hospital, just like the “medical monitoring state” didn’t last long. The end of Elizabeth II.

Returning to the old house where my grandmother lived again, the news of “this building used to be the teacher…” has become a topic of discussion among the neighbors in the community. The original living room was also covered with a futon and a brazier was placed. The dining table was changed to an offering table, the incense burner on the table was almost full, and two electronic candles were emitting a faint red light. These uncommon objects are difficult to give people a real sense, until I saw the Sanyo brand tape recorder that the old man used as a radio.

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Because I couldn’t understand the complicated text and miscellaneous buttons on it, this machine occupied a small corner in my childhood, and gradually took root and sprouted, and I dreamed that one day I could figure out this big guy. And back to that corner again, there is a large withered tree – I can easily understand the function of the text and buttons on it, but no one should use it again.

In addition to the outdated old objects, changing customs is probably the most intuitive manifestation of the development of the times. Funerals are no longer about cigarette smoke, firecrackers, crying relatives and out-of-tune bands, but hospital bills, death certificates, funeral itineraries, cremation procedures, and never-before-seen inheritance.

Bands and firecrackers have long been replaced by car stereos and electronic firecrackers, and offering incense, kneeling down and burning paper money has become a process under the guidance of professionals. step. In this cyber era, the brazier is a virtual carbon stove under the glass floor, the sugar water is industrially mass-produced Sprite, and the fragrant cake is still the sliced ​​cake I ate when I was a child, but the paper bag has also been replaced by today’s small plastic packaging bags.

Except for the Qingming winter solstice, the cemetery will not be bustling, but people will always come. The new hearse was hung with a stereo, and dragged a long tone to play tunes by Joe Hisaishi or Bandari, from far to near and then to far. Sometimes there are one or two cars behind, sometimes a long business convoy plus several tourist buses, and only trucks carrying wreaths of paper money firmly follow behind each convoy. The stall at the entrance used plastic buckets to hold chrysanthemums of various colors. People who came in stopped here and bought one after another. The prompt sound of “Alipay has arrived” was intermittent. They were stalked, wrapped in bouquets, and torn to shreds, and the remains, accompanied by tribute incense candles, covered the marble in front of the monument.

Although the slogan “Sacrifice of Civilization” has been shouted for many years, the tradition cannot be wiped out in a short time, especially in such a small city of the third and fourth tiers. The area used for incineration shrank again and again, and finally turned into a small piece of dirt that was turned over at will, looking at the cemetery buildings that were still expanding.

With folk secular beliefs from birth to death, Chinese people miraculously believe that people still live a secular life after death. Relatives bought boxes of gold bullion bars, paper money and banknotes, clothes, shoes and socks, mobile phones and cars for the “reunited” couple, plus a three-story building. The building is made of wooden frames and cardboard, and even doors and furniture are made. The front side is pasted with the drivers and servants cut out from the online picture material, and the back side is full of Hitachi air conditioner outdoor units.

The relatives who sacrificed to the sweeping stuffed these yellow and white things in the “indoor and outdoor”, and then set them on fire. Thanks to the wind, the fire burned so vigorously that people almost wanted to cry, and it also choked a three-flowered cat in the distance, who was curiously observing human behavior, jumped down the slope, and burrowed into the bushes not far away.

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When I was in elementary school, my family ordered me a magazine called “Writing King”. My father once pointed to a certain issue called “The Dividing Line of Filial Piety” and threw it on the table and asked me to read it again and again. Although the communication method was not very comfortable, But I do remember the content until now. The main idea of ​​the article is to write that some relatives are exaggerated at funerals, very close to grief, but they did not take care of the deceased very much during their lifetime, and they were happy as soon as the funeral was over; It looked numb before. I have to say that this comparison has passed the test of time and is still valid in the cyber era. At least I can feel it in the panic when my father rushed to the hospital, the silence when the body said goodbye, and the choking when talking with relatives and friends.

When I started writing, my relatives had already dug out Yuan Datou, who was in the corner of the old house for ten years after the Republic of China, and sent it to the family group to find someone to estimate it. I turned off WeChat and started persuading my mother to enroll in a college for the elderly.

The old man is gone, will there still be family reunions during the Chinese New Year? I don’t have an answer, I turn around and open the game.

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不知那台三洋录音机会怎么处理。——CaesarZX

I don’t know what to do with that Sanyo recording machine. -CaesarZX


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