The Death of My Grandmother —

In May of the lunar calendar, the wheat in front of the door has yellowed, the ancient trees at the entrance of the courtyard are full of apricots, and occasionally a phoenix with the smell of grass floats through the courtyard. The yard was overgrown with weeds, and the wild weeds that grew wildly flooded a few barely growing seedlings. Several hares alertly jumped in from the collapsed wall and left in a panic. A cuckoo chirps sadly from the branches of the poplar tree in the center of the yard. Under the mournful eaves, a group of good-looking sparrows chattered endlessly, and then carefully circled over the yard for a few times and flew away. The grandmother's body lay in the grassy pile of the yard.

When a neighbor who occasionally came to borrow farm tools found out, his grandmother had been dead for many days and her body was in tatters.

The grandmother died in a much-maligned month, and the spell seemed to have been fulfilled. To grandmothers, everything is meaningless, but the deepest curse on the living may have just begun.

Her grandmother died at the age of ninety, and in the village, she lived a long time, but the longevity of life was an unfortunate thing for her grandmother. Everyone wants him to close his eyes early, and he lives to be a cruel torture and even mockery of everyone. But in the end her death did not liberate us. The scene of my grandmother's life for more than ten years was completely like a vine that took root on the ground, clinging to the earthly world and crawling hard. I became aware that the struggle in the heart, the life attached to the body, is a huge drag, compromise, humiliation, helplessness, and the struggle to live like a human being is the price of life.

My grandmother grew short and fat, wrapped her small feet, and walked completely as a symbol of the age of that model, and in her devastated and bloodthirsty ghost sneaked day by day, I almost survived the entire juvenile age in the curse of my grandmother who was an early cancer.

In the spring when the apricot blossoms were in full bloom, my grandmother sat on the low board outside the gate and unwrapped her shroud to dry, while staring at me viciously, like a lion ready to prey, my fear oozed from the palm of my hand, and the blood of my heart quickly fled. With a wild heartbeat, I went far away from my grandmother's sight and ran into the cave with a cigarette. The parents were arguing, the mother said with tears that there was no way to live in the yard, and the second uncle's family always lost things, and the grandmother always ran outside our house to scold for half a day. The father advised the mother to be patient, saying that after all, he was an old man. Mother said that such an old man who hates the poor and loves the rich can find a few under the sky.

My father later borrowed money to build several adobe houses not far from the old yard. On the day of the move, we all thought we could escape our grandmother's curse and no longer have to fear the first scolding in the morning. But bad luck always followed, I seemed to be born a lurking thief, and my grandmother's vicious eyes stared at my footsteps on the way to school, always alert to me stealing the apricots of the second uncle's family. Although I had swallowed countless times on the yellowing apricots on the trees, my grandmother's gaze was enough to make my saliva quickly flee the scene. On several occasions, a few children took advantage of their grandmother's opportunity to come home to eat and successfully sneaked up on the almond tree. Afterwards, my grandmother sat under a tree and hit the ground with her staff and hysterically cursed the perpetrators for eighteen generations, from my noon school to the afternoon school. Seeing me, she transferred her hatred again, and in the curse showed how I gave the "wild thief" a look in exchange for credit, thus sharing the stolen goods, and predicting that my "mouth and intestines would rot." Although I was aggrieved and angry, I did not have the courage to argue at all, my grandmother's ability to scold people was rarely comparable in the village, and the lion roar gong of Zhishu's wife was also defeated by my grandmother's hands, not to mention me. More than once I secretly suspected that my grandmother had a penchant for swearing, or that she was born to swear. But when I also became a worldly person I hated, everything stopped making me panic and confuse, and everything in this world has a reason, especially in this real world where the laws of survival are too strict. Another reason why my grandmother spared no effort to drive us out of the old house in a cursing manner, and why she hated our family so much, in addition to the fact that the second uncle was a cadre and could try her to live in the village, was that she had to show her loyalty or merit to the second uncle's family in this way. I understand this when I forgive my grandmother. After all, it is not easy for everyone to live, although it is a tragedy, but at all costs, the drama of life, at a time when secularization is extremely inflated, it is only left with the theme of survival. Grandmother's misfortune seeped into her blood, and our misfortune still cannot be changed. Her grandmother's flattery or disregard for life did not change the fate of her later life.

After the second uncle's family moved to the county seat, there was only one grandmother in the old courtyard, and at that time she was more than eighty years old, her eyesight had deteriorated seriously, the relationship of age, plus a pair of small feet, the faltering grandmother was like a decaying building, and I read from her lamenting that the signal was about to collapse. What is more serious is that her insult to our family's flattery and courtesy did not change the second uncle's attitude towards her. When the second uncle moved away, the grain and everything it could sell were sold, and only a few empty caves were left in the courtyard. Fortunately, her aunt brought two bags of wheat to keep her alive when her grandmother was about to break the cooking.

In the second half of the deep winter, my grandmother huddled in the kang corner with a quilt and shivered, the firewood grass had long been burned out, and a few days ago she taught several aunts to send them some firewood. Many deep winter nights passed, and they did not come. While the grandmother was weeping in the dark cave, two thieves jumped into the courtyard through the opening in the wall, and they went straight into the cave to carry the remaining bag of wheat, and the grandmother tearfully begged them not to take her food. But her plea was as weak to the two intruders as the cold moonlight outside. A thief politely pulled on his grandmother's quilt horn and said, "It's cold, don't send it, we'll see you next time." After saying this, the two thieves unhurriedly pulled open the gate and left the courtyard. Grandmother heard the familiar voice of a thief, a murakami man, but she couldn't do anything, and things in the sun were not necessarily better than the strange things in the night.

After losing the food, my grandmother dragged a cane and groped to the home of a person with the same surname to ask for her life. Many people decided to give him alms, saying that this old woman was really a living melon, and gave away the wheat herself, and also gave the cadre's son a bad reputation in this way. When I later learned of her situation from people's voices, there was only silence, if the father was still alive, the grandmother probably would not have ended up like this, and the father died early, to a large extent, the grandmother was the culprit, but I no longer have the desire to resent her.

During the Spring Festival of the year before my grandmother died, I came back from out of town to see her. The yard was deserted, and a few skinny rats swept past my feet with impunity. Grandmother was like a dried date that had lost its moisture, her face was gray, she curled up in the corner of the kang with her eyes almost blind, and on the dirty stove were several dried steamed buns of different colors and shapes. She heard my voice and grabbed my hand and said he was afraid he wouldn't see me. Two lines of tears then flowed from the chaotic eyes. She said that she was afraid that she was going to die, and then she cursed the second uncle and the second aunt for their badness, filial piety, and so on. Her dry and cold hand held my hand tightly, and a chill rose from within me, and I knew that death had been injected into the body of this old woman, and waited for the opportunity to move, and life would eventually be forcibly taken away from the scene, and the person who died in this prize was my grandmother. I withdrew my hand vigorously, comforted her with a few words, and left the courtyard as if to escape.

An old crow in the old apricot tree outside the courtyard was chirping with a stiff voice, and my grandmother probably heard the footsteps of death in this cry. I knew I wasn't my grandmother's lifesaver, and in a sense, I was also a drowning man in the ocean of life.

Before her death, my grandmother had a bad cold, and she went to the village health center to get medicine on credit. The doctor said no one paid the bill and refused to give her medicine.

Her grandmother's funeral was very solemn, and the second uncle and several aunts built a brick hoop tomb for her. On the day of the burial, the foreign trumpet team was invited, and the ticking blow was blown. Grandmother's old clothes are also very decent, her little feet are wearing a pair of large shoes, it is said that the next life can go to heaven road, when the graveyard people cry thunder, touching the heavens, the second uncle is even more snot and tears, very sad. The whole funeral was infinitely beautiful, and the reputation of the second uncle was quickly reversed, and she became a filial piety from a rebellious thief shouted and beaten by everyone.

When I returned, my grandmother had become an abstract grave. When my grandmother died, things seemed to be no longer so vicious, and a handful of loess seemed to cover everything, but curses and ugliness were like crazy weeds spreading on the barren ground, and the mind that had lost its legality could disintegrate everything, including the reason for living. Borrowing a poem, Quan Zuo mourns his grandmother:

Calm afternoon

The shadow of the wolf

Pass through the collapsed wall

Final ridicule

It is in front of the grandmother's grave

That pile of cold dead ash

……