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Have You Finished Preparing for the End of Your Life?

Have You Finished Preparing for the End of Your Life?

  Episode  

This happened when I was a writer.
I had the opportunity to interview a director of a funeral hall.
I was allowed to observe their work at the funeral hall, and for about a month I wore mourning clothes and wandered around the funeral hall pretending to be a staff member.
There, I saw various human patterns.

A son burst into tears at the funeral of his father, who had fallen from the train platform.
There was also a funeral of a woman in her 90s at which no one came.

In some cases, staff had to lead the mourning wife out from the funeral hall for about 10 minutes.
The late husband’s mistress wanted to burn incense by any means, so the funeral director asked the mourning wife to greet the monk in a separate room and took her out of the funeral hall.
While the mourning wife was out, the mistress paid her respect to her patron.
I saw how staff worked together to avoid the trouble.

I thought that one day I would include this episode in my novel, but it is difficult to put it in words.

One day, I saw a flier in the newspaper.
It was a funeral company ad that offered consultations on preparing for the end of life.

“That’s it!” I said.
I thought it would be nice to describe people who are thinking about how to close their lives, not the stories of those who were left behind.
Then, various characters came to the surface showing signs that the story was moving.

Before they decide what to do with their grave or how to arrange their funeral, they set out to look back on their live so far.
Did they have a happy life, or should they have done something differently?

Characters who stop and begin to review their live.
While writing close to them, I was made to think about various things.
How did they feel at the point at which each of them had arrived?

Japanese

Have You Finished Preparing for the End of Your Life?
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Copyright© 2011- Nozomi Katsura All rights reserved. No reproduction and republication without written permission.