April, Qingming.

The mountain wind swept through the cherry blossoms all over the mountains, like naughty children, running to the four fields. I could smell the approaching dampness, with the occasional astringent old story.

The verdant green hides the withered yellow, and the season begins to open a colorful page.

Dancing with the wind, in addition to the full spring, there are also paper embers that burn like life.

I watched my father shout at my grandfather's grave like a master of ceremonies, some for the dead, some for the living. A large group of relatives and friends, each holding the fragrance of grass in their hands, waited quietly in front of the grave.

Offerings, wine, hanging paper, prayers......

The solemn ceremony was in order.

I looked at my father's old figure, and a strange thought suddenly popped up in my heart: When you leave in the future, who should hand over the baton that will lead your relatives to worship your ancestors in Qingming? A little cultural bloodline that has been passed down for thousands of years is afraid that it will be cut off in our hands!

"What's the daze? Kowtow! "My father kicked me.

Realizing that my carelessness might have offended my ancestors, I quickly stepped forward and kowtowed three times. Behind me, there were a lot of brothers, sisters, nephews, men and women.

Retreating into the crowd, I saw the second uncle on crutches beside me secretly wiping his tears.

I said, "Grandpa didn't walk painfully, we should be happy!" ”

The second uncle was very angry: "Xiao Si'er, can you speak?" ”

I saw the young man on the other side, looking up at the sky.

I whispered, "Master, you are well-informed, can you explain a problem to me?" ”

"Oh?" My grandfather turned his head to look at me, and there were no waves in his cloudy pupils.

"I've heard since I was a child that people have to be reincarnated after death, and they can't be ghosts all the time, right?"

"Yes!"

"Then since they are all reincarnated, who will we use the paper money we burn? Who can bless us? ”

The master was also very angry: "Silly boy, don't think that after reading a few days of books, you can be fearless." This is called thinking, this is called cohesion, do you understand? ”

I slipped aside boredly, praying to the end of this long and boring ritual sooner rather than later.

It's not that I don't respect grandpa, but I really feel that the sacrifice like a show is very unnecessary. When the old man is alive, it is enough for you to honor him.

"It's weird!" The father's surprise came from the grave, "Why can't this everlasting lamp be lit?" ”

"Is the wick wet?"

"Did you buy fake kerosene?"

"Is it ......?"

The relatives speculated wildly, and then were denied by their father one by one.

"Third uncle, grandpa's feet are pressed, and the lights can't be lit!"

The one who spoke was the second girl of my fourth aunt's family, whose nickname was Tongtong, who had just graduated from college not long ago.

As soon as my cousin spoke, everyone shut up.

The young man nodded and said, "What Tongtong said is probably true!" ”

There was no objection.

The second uncle picked up the hoe and shovel and walked straight to the grave. The father hesitated for a moment and followed. The competent gay men followed.

The reason for the two hoes was known: the coffin was rotten, the end of the foot was crushed by the sealed soil, and the mud and stone covered the grandfather's foot bones.

Over time, the dust and rotten leaves covered the top layer by layer, so it was difficult to detect the abnormality of the tomb from the outside.

Several elders whispered guilt and started to clean up, and the time took another two hours.

Everything is sorted out, and the everlasting light is really lit.

On the way down the mountain, the relatives chatted about their daily routines, and the cousin walked silently in the crowd, and no one thought she was a "rare thing".

This should be left to others, and perhaps everyone thinks it is extremely unusual; But when it happened to my cousin, it was extremely common.

My cousin was able to see things that others couldn't see from an early age, and everyone in the family knew it.

When she was eight years old, she went up to the mountains with my fourth aunt to hunt pigweed. It was dark. My cousin pulled the corner of the fourth aunt's clothes and said, "Someone is coming towards us." The fourth aunt didn't see anyone. The cousin told the fourth aunt in detail: it was a middle-aged man, tall, thin, wearing a gray gown, and a black mole on the bridge of his nose.

The fourth aunt looked around carefully a few times, but still didn't see anything. My cousin said he was all in front of us and was smiling at me!

The fourth aunt threw the bamboo basket, carried her cousin on her shoulder, and ran home desperately.

Later, the fourth aunt told my grandfather about this, and the grandfather said with a calm face, that person is your third master and my third uncle, who smoked and died in his forties, and you were not born when he died.

When my cousin was eleven years old, in the evening, I was playing checkers with my grandfather in the house, and suddenly lost the chess pieces and ran to the door, pointing to the outside of the yard and saying, which one picks up the newcomer, it's so lively!

Grandpa chased to the door and saw nothing.

My cousin said, "Grandpa, why can't you see it?" So many people knocked on the door, dressed in red and purple, playing suona and singing, the bride is beautiful!

Grandpa only felt a gust of wind blowing outside the courtyard gate, and he rested for a long time. He shuddered, and quickly carried his cousin into the house and stopped letting her out.

In the evening, the news came that Liu Mazi's daughter-in-law, who had just married a few days after entering the door more than ten miles away, hanged herself a few hours ago. Grandpa chuckled in his heart: Tongtong saw the "ghost greeting relatives".

The list goes on and on.

I grew up listening to these "nonsense" about my cousin, and when I was a child, I was scared half to death, and I didn't dare to approach her; Later, when I went out of the book, I felt that all this was nonsense.

Today, I once again learned the magic of my cousin, I looked at the rolling mountains around me, and couldn't help but ask myself: Is there really some secret in this world that can't be explained?

Half a year after the Qingming Festival worshiped my ancestors, I went on a business trip to the provincial capital.

Before leaving, the fourth aunt specially instructed me to stop by to see my cousin who was working hard in the provincial capital. This girl always said that everything was fine on the phone, but the family didn't know the details at all, and her aunt and father were worried.

After finishing my errand, I contacted my cousin.

When my cousin heard that I insisted on going to her place of work, she panicked at first, then refused, and then couldn't screw me, so she made an appointment with me in Chapter 3: You can't tell the fourth aunt what she does, and you can't let other relatives know!

This piqued my curiosity.

I took a taxi to the meeting place she had agreed to meet, only to find out that she used to work at the funeral home.

Funeral parlor!

I was so shocked that my jaw almost dropped to the ground. You say that you are a good girl, you want to be good-looking, you want to be cultured, why do you just work in such a place?

She led me into the mortuary and said I had to work overtime tonight. There are three corpses on display in the mortuary, two large and one small, a family of three who have just died in a car accident.

I've seen a lot of dead bodies, but in such an atmosphere, I still don't dare to look at them squarely. The temperature in the mortuary is very low, and sometimes it even feels like a war of teeth.

When I asked my cousin what she did, she replied easily: mortuary.

We sat on two plastic stools, separated by a simple small table.

I could only keep staring at her and eating the silk doll I bought for her, because with a slight movement of my gaze, I could see three pairs of white miserable feet.

The cousin said that she would have to beautify the family of three in a while, the work was heavy, the faces of the two adults had been seriously deformed, and the children's heads were split in half.

Seeing that I couldn't figure it out, my cousin comforted me instead: there is no high or low personality, and there is no distinction between high and low professions! It's just a job, don't bring too many additional emotions! And I love the industry, really! People, whether alive or dead, deserve respect! Here, I get along well with "them......

I said you shut up, the more I talked, the more I felt my scalp tingle.

This girl actually laughed heartlessly, she said cousin, how can you still be a policeman like this?

I had no choice but to play the warmth card and say, the fourth aunt wants to know that you are doing this......

My cousin immediately waved me off, but we said yes, and we can't tell anyone.

So are you good to talk to? Crazy, not too young.

I'm an "unmarried"!

It's hard to get the conversation going on harmoniously. I saw a wet handkerchief on the table, and grabbed it to wipe the sweat from my forehead. Yes, I was sweating, despite the cold.

It was for the deceased to wipe his body, and he just forgot to clean it up. Cousin Yun said lightly.

……

It was a meeting that made my hair stand on end. Far away from the funeral home, I could still feel a chill down my spine.