Cemeteries

He sighed, "Death has reached our generation!"

By Long Zhou

I

On the anniversary of my advisor Dr. Barton's funeral, I went for a walk in a cemetery.

All the headstones in the cemetery were flat, as flat as the horizon, lying quietly there between low green shrubs. The setting sun was clothing the cemetery with a layer of gold; red and orange fallen leaves were scattered on the paths and bushes. Exactly one year ago we had buried Dr. Barton in a flat-stoned cemetery like this one. I gathered a handful of fallen leaves and blew on them. The leaves flew up into the air as if to fly all the way to Oklahoma to Dr. Barton's cemetery, carrying my remembrances of him with them.

My mind traveled back to a year ago. The funeral ceremony at the church had been peaceful and accompanied by the harmonies of the organ. We had carried Barton's coffin out of the church and over to the veterans cemetery. We lowered it into the grave and laid white flowers on it. At that moment we had the feeling that his soul was ascending to Heaven. We were no longer sorrowful and grieving. Rather, we rejoiced at the ascendance of his soul. We said farewell to Barton in the morning, and that afternoon, as usual, we went to his place for a party.

It was a great party, just like the ones while Dr. Barton was still alive. I looked around and saw some of the guests entertaining themselves drinking beer; some were playing a vigorous game of volleyball on the lawn while others were preparing the meat and chicken at the BBQ stand. Kids were running around in the backyard. Some people were telling stories of amusing episodes in Barton's life. They talked too about Germany and the hometown of another professor, Dr. Straise, about the formality of German parties and the casualness of American parties.

I went over to the volleyball court. Most of the players were not very good and there were no rules. Zhang and his side shouted, "Our serve!" And Jeff and his gang yelled back, "No, we just scored! The ball's in your court!" Then Zhang said, "Come on! The ball went out of bounds! It hit the tree!" Jeff retorted, "Whatever! The ball fell in your court afterwards. The ball was nonlinear and controllable." Then everybody started chanting, "Nonlinear! Nonlinear!"

I started. Nonlinear and controllable! This was a volleyball term Dr. Barton had invented. I stared at Jeff who seemed to have taken on Barton's persona. Barton had always worn a faded military shirt with shorts and ragged sports shoes. When he was losing a game he would start to argue, borrowing terminology from structural analysis and controllable engineering. I knew that Barton was gone and yet the shouts from the volleyball court made me aware that the living spirit of Barton was still around.

Darkness fell quickly. And still the volleyball continued to fly back and forth until soon the nonlinear and controllable ball and the falling darkness became one.

That was how we remembered our beloved Barton. There was no weeping or tears, no sorrowful scenes. Instead there was laughter, excitement and fun. Everything was exactly the same as it had always been, as if he hadn't really died but had only gone out on some errand and would be back any time. People were waiting for him to share a drink of beer and to play the nonlinear volleyball, which he had invented. Actually, he hadn't really died at all. Nobody seemed to realize that he was dead. What was lying in the cemetery was only his body. His spirit was still alive. Some day, every one of us gathered here would be lying in a cemetery somewhere just as he was. But our spirits would be together in Heaven.

II

Barton's death and his funeral often reminded me of scenes I had witnessed in China.

Once when I was little, I was out in the country and saw a graveyard. On top of each cone-shaped tomb was a hat-like lid covered with a tangled mess of weeds. There were ravens flying over the cemetery, uttering coarse mournful cries.

Our home was near a hospital mortuary. I would often be awoken by the wailing of crowds of mourners during funeral ceremonies. I would see loved ones sobbing. At midnight they would return to burn fake money for the deceased.

On TV I would often watch the large crowds at funerals, clad in white or black, carrying coffins, scattering imitation money around and marching in procession toward the cemetery to the accompaniment of sorrowful music and loud weeping.

What a big difference there is between the East and the West when it comes to death! My mind often wandered between these scenes. On the one side there were park-like cemeteries with green lawns and fresh flowers decorating the headstones. On the other side were the cone-shaped mud piles covered with weeds, food offerings and burning incense. This side featured clean peaceful church buildings and beautiful organ and piano music, in contrast to the despairing wails and mournful music on the other side.

Westerners believe that death is only the end of the physical body. Man comes from the earth and returns to the earth at death. But man's soul is eternal and it will live forever in a place prepared by God. The one who has died has merely reached that place a bit earlier than those who are still alive. So the survivors do not actually need to mourn overmuch for the dead. When a man dies, he has merely departed to that holy and beautiful place. And the survivors are looking forward to the day when they will be re-united with those who have died.

Oriental people, however, fear death. Although we, too, talk about heaven and hell, the mere mention of death tends to make us think of hell. The survivors do not encounter the dead in some beautiful place. Rather, they gather at some special place where the dead person used to go when he was alive. The spirit of the dead person may wander back into this world so we need to prepare for his return with good wine and food, and we must burn fake money for him to spend.

There are many great aspects to Confucian culture and it deserves an important chapter in human civilization. But when it comes an hypothesis of human life, it is much more depressing than Christian culture. Even though feudalism is far behind us, we still live under the shadow of the old culture.

III

Six months ago I went to see a friend of mine. He asked me, "Do you remember A., who used to be in your mechanical engineering department?" I replied, "Of course." "Well," he said, "something terrible happened to him." I said, "I heard he was involved in a couple of car accidents." "Well, no. He's dead." "What? Dead?" I was astonished. He replied, "Yes. He fell off a training bike in the gym and died." Then he sighed, "Death has reached our generation."

Ten years ago I met up with one of my high school classmates and he told me, "B. has died." I was shocked. "What happened?" He replied: "Last year he went to Hai Nan Province to try his luck. He couldn't find a job there, so he went into partnership with someone in running a small business. Later on, he was involved in some financial disputes. And then he got murdered." B. had come from an ordinary family of four or five kids. He was the only one with a college degree and he was the future of the family. But then he died far away from home. I felt really sad for him.

C. was one of my college classmates. He was tall, handsome and full of self-confidence. And he was very popular with the girls. After graduation, he began having an affair with a beautiful married woman, whose husband was often away on business trips. When he heard about their affair, he went to challenge C. C. was eating lunch in the cafeteria when the man came up and asked him what was going on. C. responded sarcastically and arrogantly, "You should've kept your wife in order !" The man was so angry that he grabbed a beer bottle next to him and hit C. on the head. Blood spurted from the wound and shortly afterwards C. was dead.

After completing graduate school , D. and I had left Shanghai and gone back to our hometown. We managed to keep in touch. D. was an engineering major and he worked for a private company, which at that time was quite unusual. One day I went to his company to pay him a visit. Someone told me, "D. has passed away! Liver cancer." I found it hard to believe. He had been of medium build with a burly chest. Compared to the average Chinese intellectual, he would be considered healthy. His face was always ruddy and glowing and he was very active on the soccer field. How could he have anything to do with liver cancer? I had met him about a month previously and he appeared completely healthy back then.

As I was writing this, I closed my eyes. These friends or classmates of mine had lost their young lives just like that. Of course, everybody has to experience death, but they seemed to have departed far too early to experience all of life's good things. Some had even left the world as a lonely shadow before they had had a chance to taste love.

IV

Death is not at all foreign to us and the cemetery is not far away from us. Perhaps today is the day, or maybe it is tomorrow.

My heart is full of sorrow and pity at the death of those close to me. They were all such young lives and the word death is not supposed to apply to this generation. At the same time I feel strangely comforted: we are still alive, and our hearts still throb to the sensations of this world. Although we may have many disappointments, we are also full of hope, because we are alive.

Sometimes we may envy the dead, because death is a kind of rest. When one dies, all the complexities and struggles of this world cease to exist. Life can seem to be a burden, since human existence always seems to come in company with mutual destruction. The whole of world history is a history of the conquerors and the conquered. This is true from Alexander's kingdom, to the Roman Empire, to Genghis Khan's Asian European continent, to Napoleon's France, to today's Uncle Sam, the United States. Nations bury their thousands for the sake of some piece of Holy Land between them. Friends become enemies for the sake of some tiny gain. Husbands and wives turn everything upside down for no really good reasons...

We live to keep good company with death. Death is fair to everyone. As Jane Eyre said to Rochester, "We are all equal before God because we are all headed for the grave." Death treats us all the same, regardless of our prestige status, beautiful appearance or special talent. Princess Diana went to the grave in the middle of her love-affair; John Denver melted away into the Pacific while pursuing his idyllic rural dream. John Kennedy Jr. and his wife never returned from their evning flight. Death did not pass them by.

Sometimes I try to imagine the scene of my own death. I am lying in a quiet cemetery, or I am decomposing in the ocean. I hope I may be able to lie there for ever as my physical body returns to earth and my soul ascends on high. Then there will be a little headstone, on which are written the dates of my birth and my death. I do not expect any of my relatives or friends to visit me. I only hope that the gardener can keep dirt from collecting on from my grave, so that the green grass and fallen leaves may be the companions of someone who has completed his life journey; a life journey which was neither terribly exciting nor terribly boring.

The author is from Wu-han. He received a Ph. D. from Mechanical Engineering Department. Now he works at Ford Automobile.