The other end of the string

Last Monday, when I got on a train, something was different. It was eerily uncrowded. All passengers were seated comfortably in the well-airconditioned car. I tried to remember what day of the week it was. Monday. Not Sunday. Is it a bank holiday? No there's none in August. I at last remembered obon season had just started this week this year.
I can't remember well when the Japanese started to take daysoff all at once in the obon period but it was at least 20 years ago. In Tokyo we do not have custom of visiting ancestor's graves in obon season. So I didn't know what obon was. But when I got married with my wife whose hometown is in Ibaraki Prefecture, it began to dawn on me.
Thinking that the dead are all coming back during that particular days makes us feel something that we never think of in our busy daily lives. It makes us aware of a blood line; a string that has never once failed to continue, has never once discontinued from the Ancients to us. We are one end of the string for sure. But the other end of the string traces back only to a deep darkness; further to an unknown existence that is not human being. But sure, here is the string. One day, not so long from now, we will go back to that darkness. But are we not the ones that creat a new part of the string, keep it unsevered and pass it on to the next?
People welcome the dead and send them back to that world just quietly with lanterns and foods and all.
I'm going to her hometown today.