Author: Xu Zhiqiang
The man who hurt me the most in the world left me. My mother died in hospital at 5:05 on February 11, 2022 at the age of 81. The sudden departure of my mother, I was unprepared, a kind of self-blame, a kind of guilt, a feeling of falling down often bothered me. The sudden departure of my mother made me like a lost crutch without support, like a lost lamb who did not know where to go, I had no master, I was uncertain, my heart seemed to wander, and tears were like a flood that broke the embankment...
The mother was born in a poor family, from a small family with many brothers and sisters, the mother ranked fourth, there are two brothers and a sister, there is a sister at the foot. My mother was frail and sickly since I was a child, and since I can remember, my mother has not left her body. My father worked in the field all year round. It was my mother who single-handedly raised me and my brother to study.
In the mid-1980s, the family was divided into two acres and eight points of land, Mother's Day clothing and food, has twice renovated the family's housing, to provide us with a better material life. In that era of lack of food and clothing, the hardships of the mother were self-evident. My mother actually raised three of our children, I also have an older sister, who unfortunately drowned in the countryside when I was a child, and I was the third oldest in the family, so everyone in the village called me "old third". But my mother has always called me "brother", and this kind of title in our hometown is a kind of pampering of the elders to the younger generations. Until the night before I died, when I was chatting with my mother, my mother called me "brother" affectionately. Unexpectedly, it was my last communication with my mother, and it was also the last time my mother called me "brother" in the world.
Eleven years ago, 20 years after I joined the workforce, I finally bought a decent house in town with three bedrooms. My wife and I discussed bringing our parents from their hometown thousands of miles away to the city to live with us. This is 11 years, and my father died 7 years ago. After my father's death, the responsibility of caring for my mother fell to my wife and me.
11 years ago, my mother had just come from her hometown to Xiangyang and was not used to living with us. In terms of daily diet, we also often have some unpleasantness, but after all, it is a family, and we all tolerate each other. I live in the community of the elderly more, the mother cheerful personality, soon mixed with the old people in the community, the mother likes to sing, will sing a lot of hometown Huangmei opera, our hometown commonly known as "tea picking drama", but also sing many popular revolutionary songs, like "Red Star Illuminate Me to Fight", "Honghu Lake Water Waves", "Learn Lei Feng" and other revolutionary songs, the mother comes casually, a singing is half a day, and can remember the lyrics in paragraphs, I admire my mother, a mother who has not read a day's book, has extraordinary memory and language expression, My mother was also able to memorize my brother's mobile phone number.
Unfortunately, my mother did not pass on the singing gene to me. There is also a mother who is good at needlework, a mother in her eighties, who wears needle leads without wearing reading glasses, and when my wife and I go to work, my mother is at home alone, often washing and drying our clothes, and folding them neatly in the afternoon. My clothes sometimes fell off buttons and the like, and my attentive mother always quietly sewed them up. My mother knew that I liked to eat poached eggs, and often fried a few poached eggs with yellow sides for me, and when I ate my mother's meals, I always devoured them and ate them very sweetly.
Now that my mother has died suddenly, my home, which was originally lively and bustling, has suddenly become deserted. When my mother was alive, no matter how late I was out to socialize, my mother would light a small light for me in the living room, and when I came home late, I would report to my mother's room, and my mother would always tell me to rest early. Now that I open the door, I can't feel my mother's breath anymore.
Since November last year, my mother has been hospitalized twice in a row, each hospitalization is caused by leg swelling, but to the hospital for a few days, a few days of anti-inflammatory injections can reduce swelling, but after the Spring Festival this year, my mother's legs began to swell again, and more severe than the previous two times, in the hospital for two days of injections have not seen the swelling, an ominous premonition shrouded in my heart. Unexpectedly, on the third day of this hospitalization, my mother passed away.
When I think about it now, my heart is uncomfortable, usually my work is busy, and I don't have more time to accompany my mother at home. On weekends, I only have one day off at home, sometimes like to socialize with friends, and rarely accompany my mother at home. Especially in the 7 years after the death of my father, my mother often spent it in loneliness, during the day, my mother chatted and walked with the elderly in the community, and at night I went to bed almost at about 8 o'clock, and got up at dawn in the morning.
Mother, do you know that in the time after you left, now whenever I see an old man of your age, I am very excited, as kind as seeing you, and I have a thought of saying hello. Now when I come home from work, I will never hear your cry again: "My brother is back", no one will gently touch my face with that mottled old hand, no one will look at me with a pair of loving eyes without a trace of disgust, and no one will accept me without being picky. No, no, never. Since then, no one in the world has called me a "brother", and my heart hurts so much. Because I'm a child without a mother.
I can't forget the warmth of sharing a room with my mother, I like to listen to my mother's nagging, and I like to fight with my mother. Now every time I face my mother's bedroom, it often causes me infinite sadness. In accordance with my mother's last wishes, I buried my mother with my father. After doing the mother's affairs, the mother and son have been separated by yin and yang ever since.
Mother has finally returned home, to the hometown you have been thinking about day and night. In the cold early spring, I gave my mother the last journey with the etiquette of my hometown, scooped a handful of yellow soil, gently sprinkled it next to you, pinned my concerns, lit a pot of incense, and my son prostrated his head three times, so that the green smoke sent me mourning. Dear mother, rest in peace, please go well!
Author: Xu Zhiqiang, a native of Wuxue, is currently working at Xiangyang North Railway Station
Photography, video: Xu Zhiqiang