Mourning
I just got back on the 23rd when Grandma asked me to guess whether the family down the hill could have a peaceful New Year. When I asked why, it turned out the old man of that family was in very poor condition and probably wouldn’t make it. Later I learned that two elderly people from the neighboring household had also passed away—one on the 7th day of the lunar new year last year. I didn’t know. These past few years, every time I come home, I hear news of some elderly person passing. If I’m away, I wouldn’t know, because their lives are so insignificant that even the whole village barely notices.
On New Year’s Eve, the child from the family down the hill came to our backyard to move bricks. Strange. When I asked, I found out his grandfather had passed away at the age of ninety. According to our local custom, we say he “got old.” Whenever someone mentions that a person “got old,” we all understand what it means. As old age approaches and death nears, everyone has already quietly prepared themselves for other elderly people to pass at any time. They just never want to voice this thought that’s already taken root. When someone dies, upon hearing “got old,” they simply respond with a soft “oh.”
Because of the holiday, the family didn’t make any arrangements at first. One day I walked through their courtyard and saw all the children and grandchildren laughing and playing cards right in front of the memorial hall where incense and candles were burning. The atmosphere of death was completely gone. Grief and tears are reserved for formal mourning rituals. Only facing the self-generating and self-extinguishing nature of life with a smile is truly comforting. But custom dictates that when an elder passes, there must be people crying and mourning, otherwise it means the children are disrespectful. Since commercialization turned every relationship into something that can be bought with money, funeral bands now come with professional mourners who can wail to the heavens and seem utterly devastated—guaranteed to match the grief of the North Korean people when Kim Jong-il died. By the 6th or 7th, it was time for the burial. They hired chefs from out of town to prepare the funeral banquet and treated the entire village, relatives, and friends to two meals, with wine and tea served. “Happy New Year!”—the toast from the four sons of the deceased struck me as a bit funny, and I didn’t know what to say, so I just raised my cup and drank it down.
The next morning at the burial, firecrackers went off all the way from their house to the graveyard. I didn’t go watch—after all, one more person was gone, and one more grave was added. Later I heard that while stacking stones for the grave, someone got injured. He lives on the other side of the mountain, a bit older, and apparently needed money. He was paid 160 yuan to help carry the coffin, but a stone crushed and broke one of his fingers. If there was any compensation, I doubt it was much.
After the four sons kept the incense burning for seven days, they left, leaving behind an empty house.