In this way, the old carpenter calmly worked at my house for half a month before building the coffin. My mother really lay in bed for three years. At the age of forty-three, she really died.
There is a custom in our hometown of Shonan, passed down from our ancestors, that after a person dies, he or she must stay in the mourning hall for seven days before being buried. On the first day of my mother's death, all the relatives and friends in the family, as well as the folks from the production team, came to my house to help with the funeral and placed my mother's body in the coffin. Everyone left the mourning hall and went home, waiting until the seventh day for a big pot of rice. A funeral feast. Later, my father took me and my two younger brothers to keep a vigil for my mother. In the first half of the next night, it was my turn to go to bed first, and then my two younger brothers would sleep in the middle of the night. I went to take turns to keep the vigil.
I remember that after I fell asleep in the first half of the night, I fell asleep. I didn’t feel like I was in a dream. I saw a bald old man with a white beard walking toward me on the village, leaning on a seven-star crutch, and said with a smile, "Gu Weixing, congratulations." you.
My boss asked unhappily, "Why do you congratulate me?" My mother is dead. Old man, where are you from? Why are you so disrespectful? My family is having a funeral, don't you know? Is there something wrong with your brain?
The old man was not angry. He stamped the seven-star crutch on the ground and said, "I congratulate your mother. Your mother is not dead. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, a god will come down and carry your mother to the sky in a sedan chair to become a fairy."
I said, you are talking nonsense again. Where are you from? Why are you talking about such nonsense? Maybe after my mother died, her souls went to hell. Do you still tell me these jokes?
The old man said it seriously, no jokes, it was true. I heard it from the City God in the City God's Temple. He said that your mother had practiced the ten good deeds devoutly in her life and moved the Jade Emperor in heaven. The Jade Emperor would send gods down to use The sedan chair carried her to heaven to become a fairy.
I said, you said this twice, and I don’t want to hear it anymore. When you talk about the City God's Temple, are you an old man in the City God's Temple?
The old man said, I am not from the City God's Temple, I am from the countryside in southern Hunan, that is, the land god of your He family production team, and I am under the jurisdiction of the City God's Temple.
I looked at him carefully, my attitude became a little better, and I asked, I have heard of the City God and the Earth God, but I have never seen it before. Today I have seen you, the Earth God.
The Earth God stamped his seven-star crutch again and said, "I'll tell you then!" You can see me only in your dream now. If you wake up, you will not be able to see me, because I belong to the Yin people and are living beings in the underworld. You belong to the Yang people and are the living beings in the Yang world. They are not in the same time and space dimension. So you can't see me when you're awake, let alone the City God.
I half believed it, and then said, God of Earth, don’t go too far. How can you be sure that the Jade Emperor took my mother to heaven to become a fairy?
The Earth God said, I also heard what the City God said last time. I also heard that your mother should have been taken to heaven three years ago to enjoy heavenly blessings because she practiced the ten good deeds! It seems that I started practicing at the age of thirty, and practiced for more than ten years in total. Generally, after practicing for more than three years, I have become a home of accumulated good deeds, and I am sure to be happy.
I retorted, "Then you are wrong. One day three years ago, my mother was hunting hogweed in the countryside. She suddenly fainted and became ill. She lay in bed for three years before dying of the illness. I know that my mother has a long history of good deeds, but Now it seems that my family has suffered a disaster without Yu Qing. Look, my mother died at the age of forty-three. Isn't this a disaster? The laws of heaven are unfair, and evil people live a thousand years, but good people do not live long.
The Earth God said, your view is wrong. On the surface, it seems to be right, but in fact, behind the surface, there are many situations that Yang people, including you, are not clear about, and they are all confused.
I said, God of land, please explain it! Why are we Yang people so confused?
The Earth God said, Gu Weixing, listen, take your mother as an example. It is good for her to practice good deeds, but in the process of cultivating good deeds, she also unknowingly encouraged the murderous deeds. Take pig raising as an example. Your family raises two pigs a year. One pig completes the task of turning it over to the state, and the other pig is used by the family for the New Year. In other words, both pigs were killed. Although your mother did not kill it herself, you Mom raises pigs for the purpose of killing pigs, so she contributes to the killing industry and has to bear part of the sin of killing pigs.
God is very clear about punishing sins. He thinks that your mother has a good nature. Before he plans to carry your mother to heaven in an immortal sedan chair, he must first let her eliminate some of her murderous sins in the human world. The way to eliminate those murderous sins is to make her sick in the hospital bed. Three years, that is, the three years of illness that tortured her were used to offset her sin of murder. If your mother had not been guilty of killing karma, she would have gone to heaven and become a fairy three years ago. So I still congratulate you. Now that three years have passed, your mother will be a fairy in the sky!
Although I somewhat believed it, I was still stubborn and deliberately said, "It's impossible!" You made it all up, or it was a coincidence. Besides, death is like a lamp going out, and there is nothing left. How is it as mysterious as you said? I now know that I was dreaming, and my dreams were all fake. When I woke up, there was nothing. If I wake up and can still see you, I will believe you a little, but not completely. Of course, you can't talk nonsense. If you talk nonsense, I will report it to the leader of the Poor People's Association (the leader of the Poor and Lower-Middle Peasants Association) , he will immediately arrest you and slap you with a black card and criticize you, do you believe it or not?
When the God of the Earth heard this, he became angry. He picked up the seven-star crutch and poked it at me. I endured the pain and was woken up by the poke. It turned out that I was sleeping on the bed and the lights in the room were on. My younger brother Gu Weimin was calling me: Brother Weixing, it’s already 12 o’clock in the middle of the night and it’s almost early morning if you don’t get up yet. Please hurry up and let us go to wake up my mother. You are such a deep sleeper! I poked you so hard with my fingers that I couldn't even wake you up.
As soon as I heard it, I understood that the dream I just had was all fake. How could there be any land god? In the dream, the God of Earth poked me with a seven-star crutch. It turned out that it was not a seven-star crutch, but my brother Weimin poked me hard with his finger, and I woke up. When I think about it, I really don’t believe the ridiculous things that the land god told me in my dream, and I won’t tell anyone.
At that moment, I said, Weimin, wait a moment, let me get dressed, and I will immediately go to mother's coffin to watch your wake.
During the wake, I kept thinking about the scene in the dream unconsciously, especially what the Earth God said in the dream. He said that my mother was practicing ten good deeds. Although it was not clear, which ten good deeds were they? But I know clearly that my mother had good intentions, said good things, and did good things when she was alive. This is true, my mother is not only kind to people, but also kind to animals.
One year, Gu Taiyan, a member of the production team, and his family went out on business and did not come back for several days. His family tied a cow under a willow tree in front of the village and did not provide them with fodder or water. It was a dog day in June, and the cow was so hot that it The tree was spinning around, and the cow rope was about to break.
My mother found out and immediately untied the cow's rope. First, she led it to drink water, and then asked me to lead it to a field full of grass to graze. At night, we also asked the cow to be led to the cowshed behind our house and locked up, and a pile of fodder was placed for the cow to eat late at night.
