door to happiness

At two o'clock, Li Xiangyu lit the firecrackers hanging on the fence, and my father lit the two tubes of fireworks.Growing up in the city, I never saw fireworks, except on TV.Unexpectedly, the fireworks at night are so beautiful, one after another rushed into the black night, blooming all kinds of colorful flowers.

It was the most beautiful fireworks I have ever seen in my life.The two tubes of fireworks burst out one after another, and they shot for seven or eight minutes, rendering the whole sky extremely gorgeous. 8 rings, more than 120 yuan, an average of one ring more than two yuan, but it is really beautiful and brilliant!

Burning incense, burning paper, and slaughtering chickens in front of the ancestors, the whole family walks out of the gate, which is considered as the completion of the New Year's "travel".It is said that traveling at an auspicious time can guarantee good luck for a year, is it true?Several people stood side by side, in a trance, I seemed to see my mother standing beside us.She looked at the sky with a smile, and walked slowly into the black night.

This is a trip, but also a send-off!

Back in the bedroom, Dad called into Mom's ear: "Mom, you can go."

A line of tears rolled out from the corner of her left eye—I always thought she had died, but I didn't expect that she could still shed tears at this moment.

Dad wiped away the tears from mother's eyes, and shouted loudly: "Let's go, don't cry, the children will be happy, happy, don't be homesick!"

Then, Dad started to cry, and then Li Xiangyu, Li Huanyu, and Tongtong started to cry one after another.Then there was Tong Tong's mother crying loudly.While patting the edge of the bed with her hands, she counted all the sufferings her mother had experienced during her lifetime.The cry was mournful and mournful.

Dad took the new money out of his socks, pockets, and hands, and gave it back to me.I always thought that the money had to go into the coffin, but it didn't turn out to be the case.According to them, when a person dies, only the shadow of money is taken away, so that it can be used in the underworld.This is probably just a superstition.How can the dead take away the real renminbi when the living are short of money?

Tongtong's father started calling, and after a while, the team leader came.A few minutes later, the two old men entered the lobby of Li's house each carrying a big basket.After the two burned incense in front of the ancestor Liezong of the Li family, they picked up the gong mallet and struck the gong hard, making a clanking sound.This is the so-called "opening the gong". "As soon as the gongs and drums are played", the neighbors know that there is a happy event and will rush over quickly.

The two knocked from the lobby to the bedroom, and then from the bedroom to the lobby, asking Liang Yan and me to pick up a load of buckets each and follow them.They beat the gong all the way, and when they reached the small river, they sang a few librettos, and then asked us to fetch water from the river.I don't understand why I have to carry water here. Isn't there a well at the door of the house?As for what the libretto is, because of the dialect, I have no way of knowing.

When the water was brought back, the villagers in the group had already come.They set up a cauldron and poured the two loads of water into it.When the water was almost half hot, I took a bucket of water into the bedroom, and all the men withdrew, leaving only the female guests.Only then did I understand that the so-called "holy water" was nothing more than picking some clean water from outside and burning it to cleanse the dead.

Someone started tearing down the door panels of Li’s house. When I was wondering, someone took two big benches and placed them in the hall, and put the door panels on them.After a while, my mother was carried out and placed on the door panel.She has already put on the seven new clothes we bought her, which is exactly the number seven.Outermost, she was wearing a white dress, pure and flawless, like a piece of white in the snow in winter, like a cloud next to the bright moon.

I suddenly remembered the dream I had in the hotel that day: the thick smoke, the green bamboo, the white clothes, the hoe, and the fallen bamboo shoots.

At this moment, the night outside the house is hazy, and the fog is heavy, locking the top of the mountain.In the green bamboo forest, the mist is heavy and humid. Mom, you won't catch a cold, right?

The corpse stopped in the lobby for a while, and the coffin was carried into the lobby, and then the two old men came to play the gong again, and then the chicken was slaughtered.After discussing for a while, everyone spread the green paper in the coffin. Maybe this is what mother called "foreskin".Funerals in the countryside are very cumbersome, so cumbersome that every detail cannot be missed.For some unknown reason, they actually put two large clay bricks on both ends of the coffin, and then, my mother was carried in.

The most interesting thing is that they held a rope covered with copper wire, passed it from one end of the coffin to the other, and then gestured like a carpenter, as if to determine the center line of the coffin.After the midline is set, it is moved around in various ways, as if the aesthetic feeling of symmetry will be lost if one centimeter is added or less.Dad and Tongtong's dad were very nervous, staring at them all the time, as if they were afraid that the arrangement would not be symmetrical enough.Perhaps, according to the rules of the country, there is a lot of mystery in it.

After finishing this matter, everyone was not in a hurry to build the coffin, but left one by one.I think that if the coffin is not covered in the future, it should be waiting for relatives who have not seen each other to come to pay their respects.

Dad, Tongtong's parents and others all found a place to sleep, only Li Xiangyu and Li Huanyu sat in the lobby stupidly, I called them several times, they still ignored me, just moved a stool and sat stupidly with.

After a while, Tong Tong's mother came.She took a mat, spread it on the floor for them, and gave them a quilt.The two brothers lay down in the mourning hall.Seeing that I hadn't left, Li Huanyu said: "Brother Ah Hong, go to the back room and sleep for a while, we will guard here."

"Let's stay with your brother, you go to the back room to sleep for a while."

Li Huanyu laughed: "You are stupid, we are sons, and we have to guard the lattice. We have to sleep here until our mother is buried. The place is small, and it's terrible. You'd better sleep in the back room."

That's what happened!

I squeezed into their quilts: "I am also a son, so I have to guard it too!"

The two had no choice but to turn sideways.I slept in the middle, with my chest against Li Xiangyu's back and my back against Li Huanyu's chest.The two brothers have one thing in common: that is, both of them are very warm.Because they are such warm people.

On such a night and such an environment, none of the three felt sleepy, so they could only lie down and chat.The one we talked about the most that night was Mom.

"Mom is so beautiful in white!" I said

"Yes, but it's a pity that it can only be worn on festivals. It's easy to get dirty when you have to work."

"Mom should sing very nicely, like a lark."

"Yes, she can also dance the peacock."

"There are lush bamboos and trees over there, will mom go dig bamboo shoots over there?"

"I go there every year. I dig the winter bamboo shoots and sell them, and the spring bamboo shoots are dried and eaten by myself. She can't cook anything else, but the fried bacon with dried bamboo shoots is a must."

"It's a pity that I didn't eat the dried bamboo shoots and fried bacon made by my mother last time."

"Yeah, I haven't eaten for a long time."

"Xiangyu, we seem to have forgotten to buy a white headband for mom."

"White headband?" Li Xiangyu sat up suddenly? "Why did you mention this all of a sudden? If you don't tell me, I'd forget."

"Just... that's what I thought," I didn't say that I dreamed about my mother, but told him that he might think it was too absurd, "Dancing under the moonlit night in a white skirt and a white headband should be fun. beautiful."

"Yes, my mother has a white hair band. I saw it when I was a child. It seems to be a gift from my grandmother. She has never been willing to wear it." Li Xiangyu got up, rummaged through the box, and finally found the slightly old white hair band. Take it, put it in my mother's hand.

The next day, I saw Li Xiangyu's so-called filial piety hat with three "white hairs". When I didn't hear it.These three "white hairs" are to cover your eyes and ears.

I have finally seen Xiaoxiangzi's mourning stick in "The Legend of Condor Heroes", but it is a piece of paulownia wood with a white paper wrapped around it.The ancients said that the stick is made of bamboo when the father's festival is outside; the stick is made of tung for the mother's festival inside, probably because of this reason.As a son, I also wanted to do my filial piety and asked my father to make me a set of sackcloth, a filial hat and a mourning staff, but Li Huanyu stopped it in time.

Li Huanyu said: "You can follow the etiquette of a daughter and be filial. This son's etiquette is too difficult. You can't stand it alone." At first I thought they just didn't want to accept me, but later I was glad they didn't Do the gift of a son, otherwise I'm afraid it will be difficult to make it through.

Just when I asked for the ceremony of "son", Liang Yan ran over to perform the ceremony of "daughter-in-law", but Xiangyu stopped him: "It's okay, don't make trouble. Marriage is a big event, this is not a joke, I can I don’t want to ruin your reputation. When you kneel in hemp, everyone in the neighborhood knows you, how can you hold your head up in the future?”

"Didn't we talk about marriage in front of my mother when we were in Guangzhou? Didn't we have an engagement? Now that we have an agreement, it's normal for me to behave like a daughter-in-law." Liang Yan is generous, not as shy as a lady.

Li Xiangyu locked the door, and only Li's father and son, Liang Yan, and I were in the room.An awkward atmosphere rose in the room.

"It's not polite," Dad broke the embarrassing atmosphere, "Not to mention whether you can get married in the end, even if there is a matchmaker's advice, if the woman hasn't passed the door, she can't perform the ceremony of daughter-in-law. If the man loses his wife, If the new daughter-in-law wants to be a daughter-in-law, she must arrange the red wedding ceremony before the funeral. You lied at the beginning to cooperate with the treatment of the aunt, and the uncle can understand it. Don't mention this matter in the future. "

"But," Liang Yan blushed suddenly, and lowered her head, "I don't think it matters, I can marry him. I know everything about him."

"You still have parents, so don't be so hasty about this matter. Don't talk about it again. Ah Hong, your mother and I don't have a daughter, so you can do the gift of a daughter and give your mother a spiritual seat at that time. As for the photos, I will let you Tongtong hold it."

In the morning, the distant relatives and old relatives of the Li family arrived one by one.Several big men carried one or two hundred catties of lime and filled it into the coffin bowl by bowl.

No wonder the funeral system in the countryside requires the "Eight Great King Kong" to carry the coffin. It turns out that a coffin weighs about [-] catties!