For a while, I didn't dare to listen to Zhou Shen's "Big Fish", and as soon as I heard the tears, I immediately fell out.
It was 2017, and I was still working as a teacher at a private boarding elementary school. At that time, the song "Big Fish" had been on fire for a while. I usually notice it in hindsight when a colleague in the office accidentally plays it, and then I join the single loop.
Circle of friends of 17
At first, I just thought it was good, and Zhou Shen's unique and delicate voice made me think that she was a woman. So far, I have not seen the movie "Big Fish and Begonias" that was simultaneously on fire at that time, and I just think that this song is telling a story from a low chant and a long story. I also think that it can actually be used to tell more other stories. I just thought it sounded good, but it didn't get to the point of tears.
The winter was cold that year, with a lot of snow. As a homeroom teacher, I usually get up at 5:30, arrive at school before the students wake up, watch them get up, wash up, take them to the school cafeteria for breakfast, and then lead them into the classroom for early reading.
17 years of snow
One day that year, as usual, I led the students into the classroom and watched them recite. Then I got a call from my brother, who said that my uncle was in a car accident at just three o'clock in the morning, and no one was ok. My tears burst out of my eyes in an instant.
Do you know what kind of helplessness and desolation is a kind of ill-fated fate?
My uncle And Orange Niang (we call her niang there) are a very kind and loving couple. They were a few years younger than my parents, and their first daughter was the same age as me and was named Xiao Min.
I played with Xiao Min, played together, went to preschool together, and grew up together to be seven years old. In the preschool class, I was a small class leader, with the key on the classroom door hanging around my neck and the small snacks that my classmates had bribed me in my pocket. Xiao Min sat in the first row, I took a small stick and knocked her hand, she did not dare to say anything, after school she blocked me at her door, did not let me pass from there, I did not dare to say anything. In retaliation, I knocked on her hand in the classroom the next day, and she blocked me again on the way out of school. The loop is endless.
On the day I was seven years old, my grandfather and I went to the field to fertilize the corn, and my grandfather dug a pit with a shovel, and I grabbed a handful of fertilizer and put it in. After sprinkling the fertilizer, it was already more than five o'clock in the afternoon, and when we returned to the village at five o'clock, we heard the news that Xiao Min was gone.
When I ran to her house, Xiao Min had been pulled to be buried. Buried there, it seems to be in the crop field next to the railway tracks at the back of the village. Uncle Da Lai had just returned from the field, he crouched in the doorway, without a word, looking solemn, and Orange Niang cried in the house and cried her heart and lungs to death. The adults drove me away, saying that the children should not go to their house during this time, so as not to make it more difficult for Orange Lady to see it.
The railroad tracks behind the village
Xiao Min was gone, saying that he was squatting in the toilet to, and suddenly shouted, spitting out white foam. At that time in 97, we didn't have a telephone in the countryside, and I didn't wear orange shoes, so I carried her to the village clinic, and the doctor of the clinic had seen this situation, and said to go to the county hospital quickly. Found a car, pulled to the hospital, almost to the hospital door, Xiao Min shouted "Mom", eyes open and gone.
At the age of 7, I did not feel the pain and sorrow of life and death at that time, I just felt afraid, and at night I was applying fertilizer to corn, and every time I dug a pit, I buried Xiao Min. I was scared at that time for quite some time.
Now that I have my own child, I have deeply experienced the mood of being a mother, and I can imagine the pain and helplessness of my orange mother at that time. What in this world is more cruel and cruel than losing a child?
Later, after a few years, when the pain gradually eased a little, Uncle Da Lai and Orange Niang had their other two daughters. Naturally, they loved these two daughters and took care of them more carefully. But the rule in the countryside is to have a son to continue the incense, otherwise you will be looked down upon and gossiped about. Many of us today scorn this pedantic feudal idea, but at that time, most people felt that it was correct and resolutely fulfilled.
They did not go well on the road to giving birth to their son, worked hard for many years, and when they got older, they gave up. Fortunately, their feelings are particularly good, and Orange Niang once said to me, your uncle does not smoke or drink, and he has never blushed at me. She said it was worth it for me to follow him all my life.
Uncle Da Lai has been driving trucks for others in Guangdong since then, and his income is still considerable, and Orange Niang takes care of her two daughters at home and takes them to school. Time slowly faded the pain of losing their first daughter, and the family of four lived a plain but peaceful life, and it would be good if it continued like this. however......
In the winter of 17 years, Uncle Da Lai returned from Guangdong and stayed at home for two days. The night before he left, he accompanied Orange Lady to the newly built square to watch the women of the village dance in the square, and the villagers said that they had talked and laughed and laughed. Later, as usual, he bid farewell to Orange Niang and left home again for Guangdong. At three o'clock in the morning, he and another colleague were driving on the highway in a truck and heard what seemed to be a noise behind the car. He parked the van in the emergency lane and went down to check. Suddenly, a small petite car came and knocked him up at once. He fell to the ground and never woke up.
Square in the village for 17 years
I attended Uncle Dalai's funeral that winter of '17.
A small shed was set up in the courtyard of their house, and The photo of Uncle Da Lai was placed on the table of the small shed. Seven or eight drummers outside the door sat at two tables, blowing and beating, the music was thin and desolate, and the intermittent sound trembled in that cold and desolate winter day, and even people's hearts trembled.
I walked into the house and saw Orange Lady, her face sallow and her eyes could no longer cry. Two cousins squatted on the ground, draped in filial piety, and burned paper money for their fathers. The dull coffin was in the living room, and I knew that it contained Uncle Da Lai, and contained a terrible and sad death. My tears welled up at once.
Orange Niang's voice was hoarse, and she kept repeating, how do you leave, how do you leave...
I think of the lyrics in Big Fish:
"I loosen the rope of time
I'm afraid you'll fly away
I'm afraid you'll leave me
Even more afraid that you will stay here forever
Every tear is flowing towards you
Back into the bottom of the sky."
__Zhou Shen "Big Fish"
Everyone was genuinely sad, wiping the tears from my young uncle Lai and this bitter orange lady.
When the time came for the funeral, when the coffin was about to be carried out, Orange Niang almost collapsed, and her hoarse voice was full of despair, she said, I don't want you to go, I don't want you to go...
"Watch you fly away
Watch you leave me
It turns out that you were born to belong to Skyrim
Go back to the original encounter."
The other ladies dragged her and comforted her, and she said, I'll send him again. She sent him to the crossroads. Dragged home by another mother. I stood solemnly at the intersection, looking at the figure of Orange Niang being dragged back, infinitely sentimental. Then, in the cold of the harsh winter, under the hazy sky, I followed the funeral procession to the old tomb in the village and sent Uncle DaLai on his last journey...
17 years of village
For some time afterwards, as soon as I heard the song "Big Fish", the tears could not be controlled. As I said above, I think the song "Big Fish" can be used to tell more other stories, then, it also just tells the story of my uncle and my orange lady.
Now that you know this ill-fated story, do you understand the blandness and sadness between everything in the world and between the exchange of things for stars? Do you understand what kind of helplessness and desolation it is for things to be human?
I said that she didn't know what she had done in her previous life, and she would be treated like this in this life. What can be done to be wrong, it is nothing more than that fate feels that good people are good at tricking.
The silent waves drown the night
Wander across the corner at the end of the sky
Big fish swim through the cracks of dreams
Gaze at your sleeping silhouette
Watch the sea and the sky and listen to the wind and rain fall
The bearer blows away the smoke waves
It's by far the saddest song I've ever heard.