□ Li Hui
My mother was a primary school teacher and spent many years in the countryside. Therefore, my childhood was spent in a state of constant mobility, and the time spent most time was naturally in the countryside.
Unlike the urban cemeteries, the countryside has the most fields and the most graves, most of which are not concentrated, and they seem to be scattered in the wilderness, dotted with stars, and lonely. Except for the annual Qing Dynasty tomb sweeping, people rarely patronize them, and generally speaking, they always appear dilapidated, lonely, and desolate.
According to the custom in our hometown area of Hubei Province, it seems that after seven or more days of people being buried, relatives and friends should go to the memorial at night. The memorial service often lasts all night. On this night, the soul of the deceased will come out of the grave, and the adult says that the younger the age and the more sincere the heart, the shadow of the ghost can be seen and he can be seen eating food sent by his relatives.
Later, I learned from the book that there is a saying in Buddhism that "seven sevens" means that after death, when a person reaches the seventh seven days, he will be reborn elsewhere. According to the Buddhist scriptures, there are six streams of life, and there is a "bardo body" between death and life in order to be regenerated. Every seven days is a period, and if there is no birth, it will continue, and finally it will be reborn at forty-nine days. During this period, the living need to do transcendence, sacrifices, etc. I think the customs of our country must have something to do with this.
I remember that before I was ten years old, on a moonless night, I went with a little friend to pay tribute to his grandfather. The new grave is not alone on a hill, and there are many old graves scattered around. After completing the routine of laying sacrifices and bowing and setting off firecrackers, everyone stayed away from the grave and hid in a low-lying place, waiting for the undead to come out and drink and taste the sacrifices of their families. The night was very deep and quiet, and the two candles in front of the tomb fluttered in the night wind, which was very mysterious. I was a little frightened, snuggled up in the arms of the adult, but my eyes were still fixed on the front, afraid of missing that mysterious moment.
That night was spent waiting. "Look, Grandpa is out!" The little friend screamed in surprise, and was immediately covered by the adult, saying that he was afraid of alarming the undead. But I tried my best to keep my eyes open, and I still didn't see anything. Whether it was insincere or not at all, I don't know. But I later preferred to believe in my little friend's eyes, and I thought that even if there were none, he would be able to take comfort from his delusions. On such occasions, on the surface, people are for the sake of the undead, but in fact, in my opinion, it is more for their wishes to be satisfied in some form.
This may be the meaning of people creating cemeteries.
And as John Muir (known as the pioneer of the conservation movement and the "father of national parks" in the United States) said, graves are built for the dead and, to a greater extent, for the living. When they are seen, the living often see themselves. Memories, wishes, emotions, the various forms of life of the living, flicker in the cemetery. Lu Xun compiled his old texts into a book and named them "Graves", and he clearly said that he "created a small new grave", on the one hand for burial, on the other hand, for nostalgia.
What is buried is the past, and what is nostalgic is also the past, but they all belong to the present of the living. The cemetery has such a double meaning, it represents both life and death. When you look at the cemetery, it is as if you can hear the dialogue between life and death, silent, but not blank. To put it a little more clearly, it seems to me that every graveyard, every tombstone, is the threshold between life and death, the space where the two embrace. The living thus indicate a step into another world, and the deceased thus means maintaining a lasting connection with the living.
Therefore, walking into the cemetery, the living see not only the shadow of the deceased, but also the fluctuations of their own emotions. In fact, the reason why the living often patronize the cemetery, the reason why the cemetery is regarded as an eternal topic, is not so much for the sake of the deceased, but more for a certain balance of emotions in their own lives.
The first time I walked into a European cemetery was during a trip to Sweden.
In my time in Sweden, I have been to no less than ten cemeteries, either in the middle of the city, or in the countryside, or on the lakeside. Without exception, they are all near the church. Sometimes with a quick glance, sometimes with a leisurely glance, I walked alone inside like a sightseeing, taking a few photos from time to time and copying a few inscriptions. The Swedish cemetery gave me another feeling – there was no desolation, or even sentimentality, but a harmony under calm.
One of the most visited cemeteries is in Gothenburg, which is near the house of a Swedish friend where I live, and there are several mornings when I go for a walk. Of the cemeteries I've ever seen, this is the largest, and supposedly the largest in the city of Gothenburg. About a thousand graves, arranged in a regular manner. The cemetery is centered on a small hill and is surrounded by flat land. It's a cemetery with a long history, and I've seen tombstones from the eighteenth century. When it was built, it must have belonged to the suburbs, but now it is part of the urban area. Roads, residential areas, shops accompany it, and it becomes completely part of a city.
In the middle of the cemetery, there is a sculpture of a spray of water, and in the sunlight, the water mist is transparent and ethereal. The cemetery is very tidy, and at regular intervals there is a well or tap with buckets for those who come to visit the grave every day. In front of each tombstone, a small plot of land is reserved for planting flowers and plants. It is spring, and the flowers have bloomed, along with the tender grass of the water spirit next to it, dotting the cemetery and rendering warmth. The flowers and plants that have just been watered in the morning are even more vivid and bright. It's not far from the sea, and flocks of seagulls come and go.
Almost every tombstone is a sculpture, but with different shapes and sizes. The largest is a stone house, and the smallest is just a small cross. The delicate ones are bronze sculptures, or winged angels, or sphinxes, or seagulls and birds that I can't name. In its humble end, it is just a reef that has not been carved in any way.
In front of one of the most distinctive tombstones, there are no flowers and plants, but several conchs of different sizes are placed. The deceased must have been a sailor or fisherman, and his loved ones wanted him to be in a quiet world and still listen to the sound of the sea. There is also the simplest inscription, which is inscribed with only three letters, no date of birth and death, and no superfluous decoration. All of this constitutes a huge and complex cemetery, but in the fresh air, dotted with flowers and plants, they appear harmonious and artistic.
There is no sense of gloom and desolation here, nor does it form a strong contrast with the cars and people flowing around it, and the world that changes and jumps every day. On the contrary, there is the warmth created by the living. It seems that the cemetery is in the hands of the Swedes. Not rendering sentimentality. The general feeling that swedes give me is that they are more static than moving, sincere but restrained, and do not swing at will. For them, life needs peace and security, it needs art, and the same is true for the memory of the dead. In this way, the creation of the cemetery is to enrich one's own life, is a part of real life, and the cemetery naturally becomes a scene of the city.
I see people coming here from time to time by car or on foot.
An old lady, too old to be old. She has a small shovel in her hand and is trimming the flowers and plants. Seeing that I was paying attention to each tombstone, she stood up, smiled and waited for me to walk over, then enthusiastically pointed to the tombstone and talked to me. But she only speaks Swedish, and I can't understand a word of it, and I can only pronounce "Daddy, Mommy." I understood she was saying it was her mom and dad's tomb. It can be seen that she is very happy that I, an oriental person, can come to see her parents' tombstones and share the warmth of the cemetery with her on a beautiful morning.
Over the years, I have often walked into different cemeteries to pay homage to my relatives and predecessors, lay flowers in front of the tombstones, and bow. The most painful thing is that in less than a decade, my sister, father, and brother have died one after another. However, we buried them together in the same cemetery in Xiangyang, Hubei Province. In this way, the three of them will get together and will not be lonely. They will also appear in my dreams from time to time, talking to the living.
Qingming is coming, and it is the day to go into the cemetery to worship and sweep. How well john muir says: "Let them see the beautiful fusion and exchange of death and life, which are inseparably and joyfully united, like forests and grasslands, flat lands and mountains, streams and stars..."