Gradually, his grandmother recovered, could move about, and even began to cook for the household again. People were amazed and would say to her, “You’re lucky to have a good grandson looking after you.” She would smile and nod to agree.
In late February when she was very ill, she had thought she was dying. One evening she asked the entire family—her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson—to come to her bedside. She spoke to them calmly, “I’m dying. I have nothing to regret in my life. I’ve eaten whatever I wanted to eat and enjoyed a lot of ease and comfort. Death is death. When I’m dead, everything will be over for me. Don’t miss me. Don’t think of me. Just go on with your life.” She paused, then resumed, “But I have a wish. I want to be buried after I’m dead. I don’t want to be burned. Don’t take me to the crematory. I don’t want to go there. You don’t have to buy me a coffin. Just put me in a wooden box, nail it tightly, and bury it deep in the earth. Remember, deep in the earth, so that no tractor can plow me out when it turns the soil.”
“Don’t talk like this, Mom,” Ding Liang said. “You’ll be well soon.”
Yuanmin, the daughter-in-law, began sobbing.
“I want you to promise not to burn me,” the old woman insisted.
“All right, I promise,” Ding said without second thoughts.
Usually in the beginning of a year, quite a few old people died; if one could survive the spring there would be no problem for the rest of the year. Sheng was a little surprised by his grandmother’s death in the early summer. But he didn’t take it hard, for he was a young man hardened by his four years’ service in the army, where he had seen his comrades killed in live-ammunition maneuvers. His grandmother had lived eighty years; her death was like a ripe nut that falls.
Yet his mind couldn’t help turning to the burial, because nowadays the government encouraged people to cremate the dead in order to preserve arable land. Recently an editorial in the Party’s newspaper, The People’s Daily, said that in a hundred years there would be no land for growing crops if ground burials were not stopped. “We have to be responsible,” the article said, “not only for the dead but, more important, for the children to come. It is our duty to leave them an unclogged land.”
When Sheng reached home, there were a dozen people from the neighborhood in the yard. They were busy helping the Dings prepare the funeral, which was scheduled for next morning, since the hot weather made it impossible for the body to stay home for long. Under an awning in front of the house lay an old black coffin on small stools; Sheng was told that his grandmother’s body was inside. Two rows of wreaths with consolatory words on them stretched before the coffin, forming a fan-shaped space. His mother, red-eyed, came and secured a crepe around his right arm with safety pins. She told him, “Your grandma didn’t suffer. This morning we found her still in bed. We called her. She didn’t answer. She was dead for a while. Just slept to death.” Tears trickled down her cheeks, and she wiped them off.
“It’s a happy ascent,” said Uncle Wang, who lived next door.
“This old woman was blessed,” said a middle-aged woman, a colleague of Yuanmin’s. “Without any suffering, such a clean, peaceful death. I hope I’ll die in the same way.”
Sheng felt a little comforted. His father came and put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be too sad,” he told Sheng. “It’s time for her to go. She had a good life.”
Sheng nodded, feeling they shouldn’t be treating him as though he were a young boy. Then his father pulled him aside and said in a low voice, “I’ve told the Carpentry House to prepare a coffin. They don’t make coffins for the market anymore. We borrowed this one from them.” He pointed at the old coffin. “The new one will be ready tomorrow, but they don’t have good wood, only pine and aspen. We chose pine for her.”
“That’s all right. How much does it cost?”
“About a hundred and fifty.”
Sheng knew that was cheap, at a big discount, but his parents didn’t have the money. Though they both worked, they had a large debt. Fifteen years before, Sheng’s aunt, his father’s only sister, had gone mad and been sent to a mental hospital in Dalian City. Because she was unmarried at that time and he was the only man in the family, Ding had to pay for the expenses. He borrowed the money from the commune. Not until a few months before had the debt been cleared, but the Dings had not yet recovered from many years’ straits. Now, in addition to the coffin, there would be other expenses, such as the new clothes, cigarettes, wine, tea, candies, food, wreaths, and at least one feast.
Sheng found his mother in the kitchen and told her to use the money he had made at the kiln. Some neighbors overheard what he said. “Yuanmin,” an old woman praised, “what a good son you have!” Her words made Sheng blush a little.
His mother smiled and said, “His grandma died a timely death, as if she waited for her grandson to come home to look after her and make the money for her funeral.”
Sheng gave a thought to that. Somehow he felt his mother was right; it looked as though everything had mysteriously fallen into place. He turned and saw a pile of small steamed buns in a large basket. “What are these for?” he asked.
“For kids,” his mother said. “A lot of them come to steal a bun, because your grandma lived eighty years. Their parents think the buns from us can make the kids live longer, so they tell them to come here and steal some.”
Sheng remembered eating such a bun when he was ten. He picked up a dozen or so and carried them out to refill the plates at the head of the coffin.
It was getting dark. He sat on a low bench beside the coffin. Four more wreaths had been added to the rows since he came home. He noticed some clothing, perhaps his grandmother’s sheets and quilts, hanging on the fence, but they were almost torn to rags. A young woman was busy cutting the clothes with scissors. He stood up and was about to stop her, but Uncle Wang intervened, “Let her take a piece, Sheng. Your grandma was a blessed woman. That’s why they want a piece of her clothes to put into their babies’ quilts, to make the kids easier to raise.”
Then the old man described to Sheng how their roof had been covered with birds that morning. Thousands of swallows, sparrows, doves, and magpies landed on the house. Even the electric wires were fully occupied. People were amazed and thought that the birds were angels who had come down to fetch the dead, and that the old woman must have done a lot of good works in her life.
Together with the men who were either the family’s friends or grateful to his father, Sheng was to keep vigil beside the coffin. He took out some candles and joss sticks for repelling mosquitoes. On the narrow table along the coffin were a basket of steamed bread stuffed with pork and garlic bolts, cups filled with green tea, plates containing Peony cigarettes, roasted peanuts, toffee, and haw jelly. The Dings had to be very generous on this occasion.
At seven in the evening Huang Zhi, a vice-chairman of the commune, called at the Dings. After giving his condolences, he followed the host into the inner room with a teacup in his hand. “Old Ding,” Huang said uneasily, “I heard that the Carpentry House is preparing a coffin for your mother. Is that true?”