- #1
Ting Shuang stopped to look at the words on a tombstone. 1911-1951, a man named Günter had been sleeping here for 68 years.
Being from an older time, the epitaph was written in Gothic, and was difficult to decipher. Ting Shuang looked at it for a long time before trying to translate the sentence, "He's lived forty... precipitous... extraordinary years."
"Prosperous." Bai Changyi translated it concisely, "He had forty prosperous years to call his own."
"He'd owned forty prosperous years." Ting Shuang slowly and softly recited the sentence several times, and was suddenly touched by this sentence, touched by the use of the word 'own.'
He didn't know if this man named Günter had thought about what his life after fifty would be like when he was young, or whether he'd thought about how to spend the rest of his life.
But people didn't really have a future, nor a so-called 'rest of their lives.' 'The rest of our lives' was just a vision, just a figment of one's imagination. The only thing that truly belonged to you was the years you'd lived, and the present moment.
Thing Shuang stood quietly in front of the tombstone, his chest suddenly feeling lighter.
The breeze blew gently by, on this clear autumn day.
"Should we move on?" Ting Shuang asked.
"Mm." Bai Changyi answered, and the two walked forward side by side.
After taking a few steps, Bai Changyi said, "If I die tomorrow, my epitaph can have this written on it---"
"He'd owned thirty-six prosperous years, and a young lover named Ting Shuang." The tone he used was so natural and ordinary, that Ting Shuang did not feel opposed to it at all.
"It's not scary, right?"
...I am scared of what happens when I die because I don't know what's waiting for me beyong. Like Ting Shuang, I'm scared of the unknown. And I think there's comfort in reading those words, of being in the moment, of living in the now. While reading, Hozier's 'In a Week' and Reese Lansangan's 'When it happens' keeps on playing in my mind, especially the former. I just feel that the song fits the scene well, even if they have an age gap and no one necessarily knows when the two of them will die, or who goes first.
Sorry for the rambling, I just really like the idea of a couple being together even in death (like the Lovers of Hasanlu or the Lovers of Modena). Death is scary, but it can also be something gentle and cathartic.
We lay here for years or for hours
Your hand in my hand
So still and discreet
So long we become the flowers
We'd feed well the land
And worry the sheep...
[collapse]Well... Sorry I got outof topic, haha. I must say, I accidentally found this while browsing the 'Early Romance' tag but I'm glad I found this. Thank you for the author and translator for the hard work, I enjoyed savoring the words. It's not the best, but it is my cup of tea.
