Mortician

In senior year of high school I started juggling my school assignments, my portfolio, my Comparative Study and my Personal Statement around a tight schedule. I stumbled and missed several of the emails from my counselor. He replied to my apologies with anger, then with hardened sarcasm. (Could be removed)

 

As I lay in bed on Friday night, I felt colleges and essays and parents and counselors pressing down on me.

 

The next day I tried working on my personal statement. My words limped and glided off. I opened Bilibili and started searching for distractions. But the videos I would enjoy before, the stream recordings and digital carnivals, were too loud, too colorful.

 

I wanted something calmer, something that could lodge itself into that small crater of anxiety. I came upon Departures.

 

The movie’s protagonist Diago loses his job as a cellist, so he becomes a mortician who prepares the dead for funerals. He faces pressure to pay debt. His wife despises his job. His clients are not always satisfied by his work. His father had left him at a young age. And still he continues to work and eat and sleep and work again, treating the dead with an unwavering sincerity and gentleness.

 

It was fiction, but it resembled the real world more than anything I had experienced. I saw that I lived in a greenhouse, a summer garden with mild temperature and protection from harsh weather. I worried about essays and applications, not the food on my plate or the roof over my head (specificity would be more powerful). When temperature drops I turn on the heater, when I have excess time I open Hearthstone, when stress hits I have three shoulders to lean on.

 

The world I was about to enter did not promise these luxuries. I always felt detached from the works of realistic fiction: the greenhouse walls separated me from people like Diago, those who needed to face the responsibilities of the adult world—rent, debt, marriage, employment. What does it mean to be behind the steering wheel? Characters like him seemed like distant silhouettes to me.

 

Now I started seeing life beyond the greenhouse. It was a life where I would need to fight against the storm, where the pressure of the wind and rain threatens to rake you out of the dirt, and you must stand your ground. It was a life where a simple apology does not reverse the mistakes you make, where you must swallow your consequences raw. (Greenhouse could be replaced with something less cliche)

 

Diago ends a day of work eating chicken with his master and colleague. After the meal, he takes out an old cello and plays a Christmas melody.

 

He walks with his wife along a river. He bends over and picks up a pebble, handing it to his wife with a smile. The gift of a stone, he says, can be used to feel the emotions of the giver. A round stone signifies that the giver is happy. What is it you feel in this stone?

 

I started seeing volume, heaviness in Diago. He became less of a silhouette and more of my future. Was I ready for the weight? Was I ready to face failure and disappointment?

 

After finishing the movie I ask myself those questions. Shawn sends me a text, inviting me to study with him at 6:30. When we meet we talk about colleges and essays and parents and counselors. The next day I would wake, brush my teeth, and work.