Today I want to tell you what it is like to deal with the dead, the profession of an undertaker.

Satoru would not have imagined that after he spent a huge amount of money to buy a cello, the orchestra would actually disband. Under the economic crisis, a large number of people are unemployed, and where is there anyone in the mood to watch such an obvious situation as artistic performance, he is not alert, in fact, he does not even know whether he is suitable to be a cellist. For the past four months, he has supported the orchestra with enthusiasm, and as soon as the orchestra disbanded, he could no longer find a home.

When he returned home, Xiao Wu confessed to his wife about borrowing money for the piano, and his wife was a little angry, but she also understood his feelings and encouraged him to work hard to find a job.

Satoru always feels indebted to his wife, but the huge city can't find a place for them to live in, maybe he should give up, admit that he can't do it, and he proposes to go back to the countryside.

Unexpectedly, his wife readily agreed, and what he didn't expect was that after reselling the expensive cello, he felt a sense of relief. Maybe the dream he has been holding on to for a long time is not a dream at all.

The tiny house was left to him by his mother, who passed away two years ago. First his father opened a coffee shop here, then when he was six years old, his father eloped with his lover, and his mother opened a tavern here.

Xiao Wu originally thought that his wife would not adapt to life here, but his wife was very satisfied, she was doing website design, and her work place did not need to be fixed, and she lived in the countryside, not only living less stressful, but also living more freely. The countryside is probably a good place to start over.

Xiao Wu soon found a job in the newspaper that made him excited, regardless of age, with good pay, short working hours, and a regular employee. He thought it was a recruitment from a travel agency, so he went to the company called NG Agency for an interview quite nervously, but as soon as he sat down, the boss heard that he could accept a job in this singing opera, and immediately said that he was accepted.

Xiao Wu was full of fear, filled his head with question marks, and asked, "What exactly does this job do?" The boss replied, "Funeral hostess." It's the work of repairing the body. ”

This situation greatly exceeded Xiao Wu's expectations, and he took out the recruitment information, "Isn't it a tour guide?" ”

The boss's explanation was very calm, "The so-called help travel is to help others embark on a stable journey, and NG is the abbreviation of Na Coffin." Although the boss said that he would try it first, and if it was not suitable, he could leave, and he could not refuse to stuff a handful of money into Xiaowu's hand, saying that it was today's salary.

Xiao Wu took the money with a little difficulty, how good the salary was, ten times higher than he expected, and this has not yet started. After getting the hot money, he bought the best beef that he was usually reluctant to buy on the way home.

His wife was happy and asked him what job he had found. Xiao Wu vaguely related to the wedding and funeral, and his wife thought that he was playing the cello at the wedding celebration. Xiao Wu didn't correct it, he didn't dare to tell the truth, because his wife would definitely not agree.

The job was too unshaky and unclean, but he longed for the salary, and he didn't think he could make so much money. The next day, Xiao Wu came to the company, plus him, NG has a total of three employees, the boss is responsible for the burial, and now Xiao Wu has become his assistant, and there is an aunt named Yanzi who is responsible for taking orders.

Swallow said: "When the seasons change, work is the busiest. The funeral was done by the family of the deceased in the past, and then it was gradually handed over to the funeral home, so there is an agency such as NG. She wiped the coffin as she introduced, and the coffin was divided into 50,000, 100,000 and 300,000, the most expensive of which was made of cypress. Xiao Wu has never seen a dead person, not even a coffin, and is afraid and curious about the next work.

On the rare first day of work, Xiao Wu did not come into contact with the deceased, but played the deceased for the filming of the NG promotional video, and experienced the burial process from beginning to end. The burial is a very ceremonial work, and it must be standard, especially for example, the cotton cloth of the deceased must be disinfected, and the family should not see the skin of the deceased when wiping. Satoru was constantly fiddling with him as if he were a deceased, all of which made him feel strange, and there was a lot of trouble during the period.

After the shooting, the first job came very suddenly, it was an old lady who had been dead for two weeks, and the food at home was dependent on the outside to eat, not to mention the remains, scruples about Xiaowu, the first time the boss asked him to look at it, but he couldn't vomit when he looked at him at the time.

After the work, Xiao Wu seemed to have lost his soul, and if it weren't for the ridicule of others on the way back, he wouldn't have realized that he had a corpse smell on his body.

He went to the bathhouse and rubbed it from beginning to end, afraid to take the smell home. The bathhouse was opened by the mother of Satoru's classmate and an old man in the neighborhood, and everyone didn't know that he had changed jobs, and when they saw him, they praised him for how good he was at playing the cello in Tokyo. In this way, Xiao Wu was sad for a while, and he came home as if nothing happened, but when his wife brought out a plate of raw chicken, he broke the gong in a second.

His wife asked him what was wrong, he didn't answer, he just tried to hold his wife, today's impact is undoubtedly huge, he is crazy to draw the breath of a living person from his wife's body, and wants to find the true sense of existence of life.

Satoru had trouble falling asleep that night. Is all this retribution, he thought? He was raised by his mother, but when his mother died, he didn't dare to come back to see him for the last time.

Thinking of the old man, he suddenly wanted to play the piano, so he found the piano he used when he was a child, which used to look huge, but now he can hold it lightly in his hand, and the rough stone given by his father when he was a child is still remembered. It is like a key, opening the floodgates of memory, and the scenes of a family of three going to the bathhouse and a night trip to the river are all vivid, although he has long been unable to remember his father's appearance.

The next day, Xiaowu received a second job, and the one who died was a housewife, and they were five minutes late, and the man was impatient with the wait, and mocked them for not relying on the dead to eat? The boss did not get angry at the ugly words, and completed the ceremony as solemnly as ever in the face of the deceased. In the end, he put on the usual lipstick for the deceased, and the deceased's daughter cried when she saw her beautiful mother.

And the man who had been keeping a straight face finally broke down and cried at the moment before the coffin. When asked about lipstick, he was stunned because he didn't know it was his wife's favorite lipstick. It seems that at this time, he realized that his neglect of his wife really saw his wife's dedication to the family on weekdays. After the ceremony, the man chased him out to apologize to the boss and gave them a pack of food.

Satoru and his boss sit in the car, but their thoughts are elsewhere. He could not forget the cry of the deceased's daughter and the change in the attitude of the man. His prejudices seem to have loosened, and he sees in his boss what it means to be an undertaker, to bring back the lost and give them eternal beauty. After that day, Satoru began to face up to his profession.

But there was no one around him who could understand his feelings. The story of Xiao Wu becoming an undertaker slowly spread in the town. Classmates met him on the street and told him to find a serious job. The wife also found out, and she usually wondered why her husband always had to carry her behind her back when he called, and why did he have to go out in the middle of the night for some work.

Then, she found the promotional tape on his desk, and after seeing it, his wife said to Satoru, "You should quit immediately, I just want you to do ordinary work." ”

Satoru said, "What is the definition of ordinary? Isn't death something everyone has to experience? You and I will die, and death is a very ordinary thing. ”

Satoru understands his wife's fear of avoiding her, but he already agrees with the job and has the responsibility of supporting his family, and he doesn't want to give up easily.

He tried to explain to his wife, but her reaction was unusually violent, she had always supported him, but this time she did not back down, she did not want her husband to deal with dead people all day.

The quarrel didn't work, so the wife decided to go back to her parents' house, and said that she would not come back until he died. Another experience of being left behind.,Since his father and lover eloped with Xiao Wu, he and his mother have depended on each other.,Mother died.,His wife became his only relative.,Not only friends and his wife criticized him.,Even the family of the deceased also regarded him as a negative example.,Engaging in the mortuary as an act of atonement.,Under pressure from all sides,Xiao Wu went to the boss for this job.。

It was the first time he had come to his boss's office, and it was full of lush plants and full of life.

The owner is grilling pufferfish, he has always been a fan of food. Satoru sat down and saw a picture of the boss's wife. The boss said

"Whether it's work or food, it's a form of his love for life. She died five years ago, and I only became a funeral master after her death, husband and wife, one day they will face separation, and it is very painful to be left alone and alive, so dress her up beautifully, she is my first guest. ”

The boss's tone was very inaudible with a trace of sadness, the man had passed away, the grief was irretrievable, and anything could be done was to let the deceased leave in the most beautiful manner.

As Satoru listened, he suddenly remembered that he had seen a salmon swimming upstream.

He sighed at the time, how sad, working hard for death, after all, it is a death, why bother so hard? But this is the theorem of nature, whether it is a fish or a human, and there is no escape from death in the end of a lifetime, the only thing you can choose is to live. After that day, Satoru didn't mention his resignation again.

In the next job, the deceased had a beautiful face, and when he lay down, it was as if he were asleep. The boss judged from experience that he committed suicide by burning charcoal, and he found it early, so he could have such a peaceful demeanor. This time, he planned to let Satoru complete the ceremony independently, but when Satoru wiped it, he found that the deceased was actually a boy.

The boss asked the loved one if they should wear boy or girl makeup. The mother of the deceased blamed her husband and said that if she had given birth to a daughter, she would not have had these problems, and then hesitated to give the child women's clothes, which turned out to be the child's wish before her death.

This is the last time we will see each other in my life. The father of the deceased restrained his emotions in front of his wife, but knelt down to thank them for giving the child a dignified departure before Satoru and the boss left. He said: "I didn't look at my child's face anymore when he liked to dress up as a girl, alas, he was my child." Even if he pretends to be a girl, he's still my child. ”

In this job, Satoru learns about death as well as life. The dream of a musician abandons him, when he finds another meaning, to let each deceased leave the world in its most beautiful way, giving them dignity with careful and gentle movements. This kind of meaning makes him face life squarely and be confident.

After winter, Satoru comes home to see his wife returning, and she brings good news that she is pregnant. But as soon as the conversation changed, his wife asked again: "When will Xiaowu resign?" ”

Before I could reply, the phone woke up my classmate, and my classmate's mother died. It is said that the old lady fell down while carrying firewood. This bathhouse classmate has always wanted to close it and convert it into an apartment for rent, so that his mother doesn't have to work hard. However, the old lady insisted on opening the business to provide convenience for the neighbors, and the mother and son have been deadlocked.

Originally, no one could convince anyone, but the old lady's sudden death came to an end. Xiao Wu brought his wife over, and they all had to be taken care of by the old lady a lot.

Satoru buries the old lady and ties her favorite silk scarf at the end. All this was seen by the wife, her expression was full of emotion, she suddenly understood her husband's words "everyone will die", everyone not only faces their own death, but also faces the death of parents, relatives and friends, we are inevitably dealing with death.

The burial is the last memory left by the deceased to the Wei deceased, and it is a peace that has been fulfilled, and her husband is the one who has fulfilled this serenity.

When the old lady's coffin was sent to the incinerator, the classmate asked to see the bathhouse, and the old man advised him to be relieved.

The old man only ran the bathhouse with the old lady last year, and it was Christmas that day, and the old lady said to herself, let's run the bathhouse together. He thought that perhaps he had a premonition of this day, so the bathhouse was to be kept in business anyway, and the old man said, "Death may be a door, and passing away is not the end, but transcendence, to the next journey." ”

At the moment of igniting the fire, the classmate cried bitterly and said sorry to his mother.

When the flowers are in full bloom, Satoru receives the news of the death of his father, whom he has not seen for more than 30 years. The wife hoped that Xiao Wu would untie the knot and go to the funeral for his father, but Xiao Wu was unwilling, they had already separated from the father-son relationship, and even his colleague Yanzi persuaded him to go. He said that he also ran away with the person he liked when his son was six years old, and he has been missing his son all these years, but she knows that she will never see him again.

Satoru eventually loses.

On this day, he finally saw his father's face clearly. For many years, he thought his father would be happy. However, people who knew his father well said that he had always lived alone and was usually silent. The people at the funeral home were planning to move people directly into the coffin, but Xiao Wu didn't let them.

According to the process of burial, Xiao Wu completed it step by step, and when he opened his father's clenched hand, a stone fell out, which was the pebble he exchanged with his father back then. He still remembers what his father told him that when humans didn't know how to write, they would look for stones that matched their hearts and gave them to each other. The person who receives the stone understands the other person's mind based on the touch and weight of the stone. The slippery stone indicates that the mood is stable, and the uneven stone indicates that the other party can't help but live for most of his life, and the relics are only a small box, but at this time he is holding the stone given by Xiao Wu. Satoru discovers that he is also loved.

The heart, which had been frozen for more than 30 years, suddenly melted, and tears fell out unconsciously. Satoru placed the pebbles on his wife's stomach, and the two looked at each other and smiled, something was hiding in love and forgiveness.