(366) The Last Companion
The preparations for the funeral were carried out in an orderly manner, and it was not until she did it step by step that Jingrou knew that before the official farewell ceremony and funeral, the family members had to do something very special for the deceased, which she had never heard of and had never seen at all, and that was to bathe the body of the deceased Yamaguchi and clean up the body. Such a thing, as far as Jingrou knows, does not seem to exist in China, even if you want to sort out the body of the deceased, it is necessary for professionals to do it, and Jingrou, who has personally experienced the funeral of her grandmother and grandmother, although she missed her grandfather's funeral, but she knows very well that when the three old people died, no one in the family had done such a thing.
When the time came, the staff of the funeral company called the four of them to a special small room, along with Akane Noguchi and Aya Matsuo, where Yamaguchi's body was dressed in white clothes with patterns on the deceased's clothes, and he lay quietly on a special device like a large sink. At this moment, two young special workers, a man and a woman, knelt next to Yamaguchi's corpse, and after explaining the rules and things to be done to everyone, they began to ask everyone to take turns washing Yamaguchi's face and hair, and Jingrou was the one who did the most to participate in the process.
Yamaguchi had a happy smile on his face, and it really looked as if he was asleep, but when she was washing his hair, the touch on Jingrou's hand was cold, which made her cry in her heart, and she had to silently admit that Yamaguchi was about to leave this world. Except for Akane Noguchi who looked a little scared, the others didn't mean to be scared at all, the reason why this happened was because although the cold touch made Jingrou's heart feel cold, but in order not to make her daughters sad, she always talked to her daughters with a smile as if she was asleep, and gave the children the feeling that their father had not left them. Finally, the bathing procedure was over, and the two special staff members asked everyone to go out for a while and began to put makeup on Yamaguchi according to Jingyu's advice. After the makeup was done, everyone was called into the room again to confirm, and then Jingrou handed Yamaguchi's favorite clothes and a new set of overalls to the staff, and put them all in Yamaguchi's coffin to be cremated together. Originally, Jingrou chose spring, summer, autumn and winter for Yamaguchi, and he liked many sets of clothes and shoes throughout the year, and wanted to let Yamaguchi take them away at the time of cremation, so that he would be poor in clothes and less clothes there. But the staff told Jingrou that the clothes could only be put in the coffin, and there was not so much place to put them, so she had no choice but to give up.
After the bathing procedure, as the time for the funeral began to get closer and closer, more and more people came to attend the funeral, and because there were many branches and many related units, the pomp and circumstance of the Yamaguchi funeral was very large. Since there were no people seated in the venue, the staff had to arrange a lot of seats outside the venue, and even so, some guests had to wait in the lounge on the other floor. Flower baskets sent by various units and individuals were placed outside the venue, and a large photo of Yamaguchi with a smile on his face was placed on a huge wooden carved altar, and huge flower baskets were also placed on both sides of the surrounding area, and the scene was absolutely as spectacular as the funeral of a celebrity.
Jing Rou and the young boss, the successor of the old chairman, as well as the company's main senior leaders, were arranged to receive a group of guests who had come to attend the funeral at the door of the venue. Although most people Jingrou didn't know at all, she still had contact with some customers from the head office, and she had also eaten and chatted together, so everyone's greetings and comfort to themselves with tears made Jingrou's heart full of gratitude at this moment.
The farewell ceremony was about to begin, and Jingrou sat in the front row of the family members with her daughters and the pair of daughters in Yamaguchi, and then spoke according to the procedure, followed by Jingrou speaking on behalf of the family. The speech was prepared for Jingrou by the person in charge of the funeral company, but because it was all in Japanese, and it was all words that were not usually used at all, so his good friend Qi Tian had already translated it for Jingrou yesterday. Jingrou has practiced and read dozens of times since yesterday, but she is still very afraid that she will be embarrassed to read it wrong in front of everyone. And when the little boss spoke before Jingrou, it was obvious that she was overreading because of nervousness, so as soon as she walked in front of everyone and stood in front of the microphone, she immediately felt her heartbeat accelerating. Fortunately, after Jingrou stabilized her mind, she let herself read the last word very calmly and slowly, so no one except herself could see how nervous she was in her heart.
Immediately after that, a projection device was lowered from the ceiling on one side of the venue, and all the lights in the venue were turned off, and a photo of Yamaguchi began to be shown on the screen, and the host began to tell the story of Yamaguchi's life to the sound of music. Most of these photos were hand-picked by Jingrou one by one, and a few were provided by the company, including a single photo of Yamaguchi running desperately in relay with Yamaguchi during the daughter's sports meeting during the company's best development, as well as a photo of Yamaguchi and Jingrou as a couple, a family of five, and a group photo of them and the old chairman.
At this moment, Jingrou looked at the photos and felt very complicated in her heart, she didn't listen to what the host was saying at all, and she didn't have the mood to think about what the host meant. Because in Jingrou's mind, she is all reminiscing about her past with Yamaguchi, from the first time you met, to meeting and falling in love, to getting married and having children, and settling in Japan, until she witnessed Yamaguchi pass away in front of her...... It all seemed to happen yesterday, but until now, Jingrou didn't think that Yamaguchi had really died and left their mother and daughter.
Next, the monk brought his other assistant, the monk, into the room, and began to chant the sutra for Yamaguchi, and led everyone to bow together, saying a word of transcendence that Jingrou could not understand at all, and could not say. After that, Jingrou was the first to come forward to give Yamaguchi a farewell ceremony, and then the daughters, and then Jingrou and her three daughters stood on the side of the altar together, nodding and thanking everyone who came to this farewell, until the farewell ceremony finally ended smoothly.
Jingrou took her three daughters back to the lounge, and had a lively dinner with Akane Noguchi's family, Matsuo Aya's family, and her good friends Xu Huan and Qi Tian. After the dinner was over, everyone left one by one, and only Jingrou, mother and daughter, were left in the lounge, and Yamaguchi, who was smiling in the frozen coffin. After cleaning up the table, at the suggestion of the staff, Jingrou and her three daughters wrote down what they wanted to say to their husband and father on a beautiful piece of cardboard, and then Jingrou carefully put the cardboard into the clothes on Yamaguchi's chest.
Because tomorrow's funeral ceremony will be held in the morning, after the mother and daughter finished washing, they lit a spiral incense for Yamaguchi that must be burned until dawn, and Jingrou asked the daughters to hurry up and go to sleep. It's just that the daughters are asleep, but Jingrou herself can't fall asleep after tossing and turning, and she walked to the coffin at the mountain pass alone.
Because she was afraid of waking up her daughters, Jingrou didn't speak, she couldn't take her eyes off Yamaguchi's face that seemed to be sleeping, and silently said to him in her heart: "Yamaguchi, seeing that you slept so beautifully, is there no more painful place on your body, and you can finally lie comfortably?" Why do I think you're going to wake up, stop kidding me, and if you've never left, wake up quickly! If you don't wake up again, it's too late tomorrow, do you know that tomorrow I'm going to send you to be cremated, and by that time I'll never recognize you again......"
As she spoke, Jingrou couldn't control her tears like rain, but she covered her mouth with her hand and didn't let herself make a sound, until she didn't get a response from Yamaguchi for a long time, she cried and cried and had a new idea. Jingrou lay down on the quilt lightly again, and she closed her eyes tightly and let herself fall asleep quickly, because she hoped that Yamaguchi's spirit could enter her dreams while she was asleep. It's a pity that until dawn when she woke up, Jingrou's wish could not really be realized, and as soon as she opened her eyes, she looked at Yamaguchi's coffin with some disappointment, wondering why he refused to fulfill his little wish in the last little time he had left.
Quickly sorted out her mood, Jingrou quickly woke up her three daughters to get up and freshen up, and then ate a little breakfast sent by the service staff, and the four mother and daughter were all ready.
Before the funeral began, Boss Inoue, who was very good at the same age as Yamaguchi, came from afar with his wife. After learning that Yamaguchi was critically ill, the couple chatted with Yamaguchi for a long time in the hospital, but they didn't expect that after that goodbye, they would be separated from Yamaguchi forever.
After Mrs. Inoue met, she said something amazing to Jingrou, which made everyone who heard it feel a little creepy except for Jingrou: "Mrs. Yamaguchi, after leaving the hospital that night, we drove straight home. You may not believe it when I say it, but we do experience a very strange and evil thing. When we arrived at a rest house on the highway, my husband was on his way to the toilet when he saw a man who looked exactly like Yamaguchi's boss, sitting on the toilet and looking at him without saying a word, and then disappeared again. When my husband came out of the toilet and told me, I didn't believe that he must have been dazzled, but then when we were eating in the rest house, we saw a man who looked exactly like Yamaguchi's boss, sitting near us without saying a word. We were all taken aback, but we still comforted each other, feeling that people who looked like them still existed, and there was no need to scare ourselves with cranky thoughts. But what we never expected was that the man, who was like the twin of Yamaguchi's boss, would follow us until we reached the exit of the highway, and then disappeared at some point. ”
After Mrs. Inoue finished speaking, Inoue also seemed to be hit hard and said, "I think that person is Yamaguchi, he was worried about me so he sent us all the way home, I know that he must have died after that, alas, my friend......"