The Day of Accompanying Dad (1)

Finally retired at the end of last year, nothing was light, the 38-year career finally came to an end, liberation, during the various retirement procedures, the feeling of liberation has been deeply experienced. Many friends and colleagues are asking me, what do I most want to do after retirement? Go to work again? Or go on a trip? Maybe with their various hobbies, let it go... My answer was to go back to my hometown to accompany my old father.

Yes, the old father is still alive and is 95 years old this year. I was the youngest of my siblings, and I was spoiled by my family from an early age. To paraphrase today, when I was young, I longed for poetry and far away, so I left home at the age of 18 to study at a university thousands of miles away from home, and lived and worked in other places most of the time.

When I was young, I always felt that my parents were big trees, I was dependent, my parents' home was the base for my own outings, if there was anything bad I could go home, there were parents in the back of the house, and my parents were never alone in themselves. A few decades have passed, time and space have shifted greatly, and I have also married and had children, especially in the past ten years, with the aging of my parents and the deterioration of my health, the former base area has become the concern of our children outside, and the former rear has become the "front" that we are ready to go to at any time.

My mother left us in 2018 after several critical illnesses, leaving my sad father alone. They loved each other for a lifetime, and when their mother was taken away by 120, their father was worried at home, and at this time, his own physical condition was not good, and it was impossible to visit his mother in the hospital. A few days after my mother died in the hospital, we did not dare to let him know at the first time, after a few days of delay, my father had a premonition, and he really couldn't hide it before telling him, at this time, my father, who did not speak much, was even more silent. On the surface, the wind and waves were calm, but inside he did not know how much pain he had endured.

Father cardiovascular and cerebrovascular is not good, heart and brain infarction has also occurred many times, that time we are very worried, do not know whether the father can survive, many elderly people are in the partner died soon after the death of the continuum, in the mother died within a year of our mother's death none of us dare to mention anything in front of the father, fortunately the father over this hurdle, through the difficult first year, but to 2020, after a sick to the hospital, diagnosed as multiple cardio-cerebral infarction, at any time there are re-infarction situations, do not dare to be discharged from the hospital again.

Due to work reasons, every time I go home in these years, I am in a hurry and have no opportunity to accompany the elderly. Now I have finally mixed with retirement, but I am very sorry that the old mother is no longer there, and whenever I think back to my mother before leaving, I was deeply tormented by illness, and I did not do anything, I will unconsciously cry of sadness, and I am very sorry that I did not accompany her old man in the last days of her life. Fortunately, my father was still safe and gave me a chance to accompany me, so the first thing I thought of after retirement was to go back to my hometown to accompany my old father, not to leave the regret of "children want to raise and not to be loved", but also hope to realize the good wish of "you raised me to grow up, I accompanied you to the last moment of life".

(To be continued)