Linghun by Ai Jiang

Author:Ai Jiang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dark Matter Magazine
Published: 2023-03-14T16:00:09+00:00

A RAMBLE ON DI FU LING & DEATH

Di fu ling are earthbound spirits, usually ghosts who remain on Earth because they cannot let go, have unfinished matters, and more often than not, are malicious spirits. Though based on these spirits, the ghosts that remain in HOME, that appear in the houses, are not bound by their own thoughts, desires, or regrets, but by the living that keep them there—the living who are unable to let go of the dead.

Di fu ling have a connection to the places in which they have passed in, the land that holds their memory, and the people that influenced them most during their lives.

When we think about grief and spirits, we mostly think about people and the dead. But I think grief can be tied not only to people but to places, memories, cultures, languages, and identity.

Memories often work to confuse us, showing us the most glorious idealization of images or the most traumatizing instances of our pain, and sometimes, everything is repressed, and so we see nothing at all.

My uncle passed when I was in elementary school, when I was in fourth grade, if I remember correctly (though it’s likely I’m wrong about the year). He was taken to the spirit world by lung cancer after several months of fighting death in its final stages—bedridden, an expectant passenger aboard the ferryman’s ship, with my relatives acting as anchor, refusing to let the ship go. He didn’t smoke, he barely drank, and I can honestly say he was the most saintly person I have ever met in my life—even now.

My mother became almost like a living ghost after my uncle’s death, a floating entity that went about her routine, without her mind or heart being truly there. It was as though her spirit had been whisked away, leaving her body behind as a shell. Nearing his death, my mother rushed back to China to accompany him in his last moments. As a child, I understood, but I also didn’t understand at all. To me at such a young age, I couldn’t comprehend the concept of spending your own living breaths hoping and praying for more sand to be added to a dying person’s hourglass.

But thinking back on it now, I would have done the same.

When my uncle passed, I caught word of it on the phone, halfway across the world. I couldn’t express my sadness in words, so I drew an owl shedding tears, perched atop a tree of falling leaves, the limbs almost completely barren.

My uncle was one of my favorite relatives, and one of the closest. But when I immigrated to Canada, his memory of me stalled at four years old. What I think I grieve most is not his death, but how we drifted apart over the years. He gifted me barbie dolls every year when I was still in China, and he gifted me Barbie dolls each time I visited, even after I no longer played with them. It was an unwilling separation between us, but such things often happen with growing up.

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