There are white things in the family, filial sons guard the spirits, and the corpses are buried and buried in the earth.

Wakes have been an indispensable part of Chinese funeral culture since ancient times, and they are also an essential part of our life journey. No matter how rich and wealthy you were during your lifetime and how you dominated one side, you can only kneel by the wooden coffin at this time and accept the supervision and condolences of relatives and friends.

Of course, there are a lot of strange things that happen during the wake, and although things are unusual, I think you and I must be in the same opinion, that is, you don't feel afraid, because the people who are close to you are lying in the coffin.

When I was a child, I also guarded the spirits several times, all with the elders in the family, and the bodies of the deceased elders should be placed in the middle of the hall, with the head facing the direction of the door, and the door and door of the hall should be wide open, so as not to hinder the free passage of the souls of the relatives. At that time, the bed we used to place the body was a bed made of wood and rattan ropes, called a far bed in the countryside of northern Jiangsu, and a straw mat was spread on the bed, and after the burial, these had to be discarded in the wilderness. The corpse lying flat on the straw mat is the body, wearing a shroud, a cap, and a white cloth covering the body, and then covering the face with a bunch (stack) of fire paper (yellow paper). A small table is placed in front of the head, a lamp is lit on the table, the lamp cannot be extinguished until the burial, and a brazier is placed in front of the table, and the paper (yellow paper) is constantly burned.

It was when my mother's grandfather died, and I had to call my grandfather according to the name of my hometown. The village where the old grandfather is located is very remote, it is built on the side of the river, and sometimes there is a possibility of flooding when there is a big flood, and there is a lonely existence in such a village within a radius of about 10 kilometers. My grandfather was at my fourth grandfather's house (my grandfather's fourth son), who had two tiled houses, a large yard, and a cowshed on the side of the yard.

The body of the old grandfather was placed in the main hall, and the ground on the left and right sides was covered with dry firewood and grass, and my grandfathers were guarding on both sides. Every time a guest comes to mourn, they have to kneel down and burn the fire paper in response, and the funeral ceremony is generally a male protagonist and a female auxiliary, so some female relatives in the family are gathered in the side hall to do some auxiliary work.

"Xiaobao, you go in and guard with your fourth grandfather."

My mother said to me while tidying up her white filial piety clothes.

"Good!"

I responded loudly, quickly tidied up and went into the mourning hall, and after searching around, I quickly locked on to the fourth grandfather who was kneeling behind the mourning hall.

"Fourth grandfather, my mother asked me to come with you!"

I walked sideways to the position of the fourth grandfather, and then sat down, and the fourth grandfather nodded and handed me a cotton mat.

I found a comfortable place to sit down, and began to look around, I was sitting in the back left corner of the mortuary bed, and from my angle, I could directly see my grandfather's feet in the black shoes with mille-feuille soles. Normally, resting next to a corpse is uncomfortable, but I don't feel scared at all. I turned sideways and looked at my grandfather's face covered by fire paper, and I could only see half of the side of the face, iron blue, and skin like the old bark of a dead tree. Except for the feet and a little side of the face, the other parts are covered with a white cloth, which is not disrespectful, and every time there is a white thing, I will be curious to carefully observe the deceased, from head to toe.

It was 9 p.m. and the people who helped and came to pay their respects were gone, and there were only a few people left at the scene. I was arranged to hold a wake-up with my fourth grandfather, my mother lived in the next room, several grandfathers were chatting in a low voice, and I was wrapped in a quilt lying on the firewood and grass, and I fell asleep in a daze.

I was sleeping soundly, and suddenly felt a cold wind blowing, and the temperature in the mourning hall seemed to drop a few degrees suddenly. I shrunk back and tried to wrap the quilt a little tighter, and suddenly from my slightly open eyes suddenly appeared to be a person standing in front of me, but I didn't open my eyes and continued to squint.

Looking at it, I feel more and more familiar with this person... It's Grandpa! From the shadow that was not very clear, I finally recognized the person in front of me as my grandfather. I still didn't open my eyes, probably because I was afraid, but I saw my grandfather standing on top of the spiritual bed, looking around at the grandfathers lying in a circle.

I squinted and watched and fell asleep again, when I caught one last glimpse of my grandfather's shadow drifting out of the hall door.

When I woke up the next day and morning, I quietly told my mother what I had seen. My mother said that I must have been dreaming, and she said that she did have a dream of having an old grandfather last night.

In the dream, the old grandfather woke up the sleeping mother, and then talked to the old mother about some short things in the family, and after chatting for a while, the old grandfather said, 'It's not too early, I should go.' After saying that, he turned positive and left, and my mother hurriedly chased after her, and when she caught up in the yard, she saw that my grandfather had been floating upwards.

My mother wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and told me that this was my grandfather saying goodbye to us, and that he must have gone to heaven without any problems. Even now, when we talk about it, my mother will tell us about this dream.

My grandfather passed away in 2012, and when he died, I had just turned from a compulsory soldier to a volunteer, and I never thought that my first vacation from the army would be to attend my grandfather's funeral.

After receiving the news, I rushed back as soon as possible, and met my brother who was an armed policeman in Xuzhou, and we saw my grandfather for the last time at my aunt's house. I think sometimes the bond between relatives can really transcend life and death, when my brother and I went to my grandfather's bed, my grandfather, who was already dying, suddenly recognized me, and called my nickname three times, and said to me, 'It's coming~' This is also the last sentence that grandpa left in this world.

Because the funeral is to be held at home, so the grandfather's body must be transported back, and the rural saying is that if a person dies in a foreign place, he must throw paper money when crossing the bridge and crossing the road in the process of returning home, and tell the deceased that this is the way home, so as to prevent the soul from getting lost and wandering away. In this way, my father took my grandfather home with paper money all the way, and when I got home, I carried my grandfather from the car to the mourning bed in the mourning hall, and at that time I knew that after death, the body really has no weight.

It was the second night of my grandfather's wake, and I went out to the toilet and saw an unexplained scene, my grandfather's family lived on the far edge of the village, relatively remote, and behind the house was a large area of farmland in the village, and there was no home. I solved the problem behind a few large trees, and when I was about to go back, I suddenly noticed a strange cloud behind the room where the mourning hall was located, or a white gas, floating in the air, faintly, like several figures inside. The white gas slowly drifted from the air to the back of the mourning hall, and then stopped moving, and then a white shadow floated out of the wall and merged into the floating white gas. I watched from afar, and the white gas that melted into the white shadow lingered for a while, then rose again and disappeared into the dark night sky.

The next day, while chatting with my sister, my sister saw the same thing, because my aunt was a Christian, so we told her about it. The aunt's explanation is that grandpa has never enjoyed happiness in his life, from war to famine, his life has been full of disasters, so when he dies, he will go to heaven, and it is the people of heaven who will take him back.

And that's the end of my story about the wake. Human life is very short, life does not bring, death does not take away, my father often said, people live a hundred years old, half of the time is sleeping, leaving us little time to do things, to accompany the family. The son wants to raise but the parent is not there, and now we seem to be repeating things that we regret. Finally, I would like to give you a sentence to cherish the present and cherish the time!