Take the trouble to follow before reading to facilitate future discussion and sharing
With this article, I remember my father and grandfather, as well as all the elders.
01
On this day, the sky was gray and seemed to be raining.
As a sophomore in high school, he didn't go to school today because his father died after four in the morning.
His father also starved to death, and he was already skinny and swollen.
My father is already the fourth relative in their family to starve to death this year.
Looking at his younger brothers and sisters who were crying on his father, as the eldest son and brother of his younger siblings, he forced himself to let tears roll in his eyes.
His siblings wept sadly, but he was worried about how to bury his father.
From 1959 to 1961, China experienced three years of natural disasters.
Due to Sichuan's large population, a large amount of grain was transferred to the big cities, and many people starved to death.
02
He asked his eldest brother to go to school with him every day and say, "Ask her to take a day off from the teacher on her behalf." ”
After explaining this matter, he walked to the "old house" to find his uncle's eldest son, his cousin.
The "old house" is more than ten miles away from the "new house" where they now live, and belongs to two different townships.
My father was so tall that he couldn't be buried by himself. Like the previous two burials of the old man, he could only go to the humble eldest brother.
His father and brothers, the eldest uncle and the third father died before liberation. The fourth father worked as an education instructor in a district a hundred miles away, in charge of schools in more than a dozen townships, was particularly busy with work, and returned home two or three times a year.
As soon as his father swallowed his breath, he set off, did not eat breakfast, walked, and felt his legs weak.
The porridge in the public canteen of the brigade is getting clearer, and there is almost no rice in sight, and some carrots or sweet potatoes are floating.
I heard that someone is already eating Guanyin soil, and that thing can fill the stomach temporarily, but it can't pull out the stool, which is very uncomfortable.
In the brigade storage room, he found his eldest brother. The eldest brother immediately handed over two raw sweet potatoes for him to fill his stomach.
The eldest brother is the custodian of the brigade, guarding the sweet potatoes, carrots and a small amount of grain every day.
The eldest brother is a dutiful custodian, and he never takes a grain from home, but every time his cousin comes, he will bring him a few sweet potatoes to eat.
The eldest brother asked him directly: "Is the second father gone?" ”
He did not dare to cry in front of his younger siblings, but he howled in front of his eldest brother.
The eldest brother wiped away his tears with his sleeve and patted him on the shoulder and said, "Second brother, let's go, let's go and bury the second father together." ”
The grandfather counted all the grandchildren together in order of age, the eldest brother is the eldest, he is the second.
Although he was the eldest in his father's room, his eldest brother's children have been calling him second father for many years.
03
The eldest brother also indiscriminately nibbled on two sweet potatoes for breakfast and followed him to the "new house".
When the brothers arrived home, he saw that his father was still lying in bed, and his younger siblings were tired and overwhelmed, looking forward to his brother's return.
He himself has two biological brothers and a biological sister. The daughter of the fourth father and the younger daughter of the aunt are also living with them in the "new house".
The "old house" was built by my grandfather before liberation by opening a silversmith shop to earn money. Later, he went to the neighboring township to buy dozens of acres of land, and in order to keep these lands, he specially built "new houses"
The grandfather left the eldest one in the "old house" and moved to the "new house" with the second old, the third and the fourth.
My grandfather's only daughter first married a postman in Chengdu. It is a pity that she got tuberculosis and died in this "new house".
When my aunt died, he was a child and still sleeping in her bed.
04
The eldest brother took him around the hill behind the house and said to him: "Second brother, if you bury the second father and the second mother together, you need to dig a big pit. The two of us still had to carry the coffin and my second father up the mountain, and we had no strength to dig a pit. It is better to bury the second father in the sand ditch below, at most twenty meters away from the second mother's grave. ”
He looked at these two positions, and then thought about his current situation, and really did not have the strength to dig that big hole again.
He thought there was no way to do it, it could only be like this.
The eldest brother and he first carried the lid of the coffin to the back hill, and both of them were sweaty and panting.
When they went back to carry the coffin, the two brothers tried several times but did not lift it.
He had to ask his neighbor two uncles to come and help.
One of his uncles' daughter went to school with him every day, because the school was more than a dozen miles from home.
Four men put on ropes and struggled to lift the coffin, which had no lid, to the edge of the trench.
After resting for a while, the four of them hoisted the coffin with ropes into the ditch.
After the neighbor's uncle returned, the brothers sat by the ditch to rest.
This trench is a small naturally formed boat-shaped pool that is usually dry and fills with water during the rainy season.
He told his eldest brother: "This little gutter is where I learned to swim. I'm fluttering in it and it's just going. But today I am going to use it to bury my father. ”
The eldest brother said: "Now everyone is hungry, and they can only grievance the second father and his old man." First it was my grandfather, then my father, and then my second father worried about this big family. In the future, everyone will have to count on the fourth father. ”
He and his eldest brother first carried his father from the bed to a wooden ladder, and then used the wooden ladder to carry his father slowly to the edge of the ditch.
After putting his father in the coffin, he asked his eldest brother to call the other younger siblings to his father's coffin.
He asked his younger siblings to say goodbye to their father, second father, and second uncle.
Once again, the younger siblings cried hoarsely.
With tears in his eyes, he closed the lid of his father's coffin with his eldest brother.
The eldest brother also sobbed softly, and he could no longer hold back, threw himself on his father's coffin and cried.
The younger siblings cried even harder when they saw the two brothers crying so sadly.
The eldest brother swung his hoe and dug the dirt on the cliff next to him, and he and his younger siblings pushed the soil into the sand ditch.
There is no adult in this big family except for the four fathers who work far away. There is a third mother who is still alive, but has long since remarried, and she will not care about this group of children.
Soon the small ditch was filled, and he and his eldest brother built a small grave bag for their father.
He also secretly noted the location of his parents' graves, fearing that he would not find them many years later.
He always remembered that there were two large cypress trees next to his father's grave.
05
The eldest brother left in a hurry because he still had to go back to guard his storage room, which was where the lives of hundreds of people in the entire brigade were at stake.
He left his eldest brother to finish eating before leaving. The eldest brother refused, saying that I had more food there than you did, and I couldn't bear to eat your pitiful gruel.
After burying my father, it was almost lunchtime. The eldest brother sensibly took his younger siblings to the public cafeteria to beat the porridge back.
He organized lunch together. The younger brothers and sisters did not drink porridge, and they all said that they would give the porridge to their brothers. They all said that my brother was too tired to starve my brother anymore.
He said to his siblings: "I have already eaten two raw sweet potatoes at my eldest brother's house, I really am not hungry, you can eat each other." ”
The eldest brother said to his brother smartly: "Why didn't we starve to death like the second father, I take everyone to the field every day to see." We will eat whatever is in the field. ”
The eldest sister also said to her brother: "The second eldest is the least afraid of things, he was caught by the cadres of the brigade, and people beat him, and he was still eating." Everyone starved to death, and he did not die of hunger. ”
My aunt's youngest daughter also said: "The sweet potatoes we brought back for my second uncle to eat, he would rather be hungry than eat them." He also said that it was stolen and could not be eaten. Like his second aunt, he would rather starve to death than eat what we brought back. ”
The daughter of the little brother and the fourth father is too young to only care about drinking porridge, and does not care about listening to the brothers and sisters.
He looked at his younger siblings, and his heart was mixed. Looking at the two biological brothers and one biological sister, I thought that they had become children without parents and mothers like themselves.
Looking at the daughter of the fourth father, I thought that she was also pitiful, a child with a father and no mother. She also lost her mother and brother within a year.
Looking at the aunt's little daughter, this well-behaved little cousin, she lost her biological mother at a young age. was thrown by his father in the country at the second uncle's house, although there are uncles and uncles in pain, brothers and sisters accompany them, but after all, it is not their own home.
He thought to himself that this little cousin was also a poor child. He didn't know that his father, who was far away in Chengdu, had already continued his string and found a stepmother for her.
06
After lunch, the younger siblings went to bed. He did not sleep at all and went to the back mountain again. First went to my mother's grave a little further away and sat for a while.
He sat on the ground next to his mother's grave, and her face appeared clearly in front of him.
He will never forget what his mother said before she died.
"Boss, can you go and find me a bowl of rice soup to drink, I'm so hungry!" I want to drink a bowl of rice soup. The mother said weakly.
The eldest brother came over and handed a cleanly washed little sweet potato to his mother and said, "Mom, take a bite of the sweet potato." It wasn't stolen, I picked it up after the team dug up the sweet potatoes. ”
"My second eldest is really filial! Mom can't bite the sweet potato, it's too hard, and I don't have the strength to bite the sweet potato. Eat it yourself. ”
That night my mother swallowed, and she starved to death.
She was a rural woman who grew up starving to death rather than stealing and robbing her.
She rejected everything the children got back from the field.
The father watched his wife starve to death in front of the bed, and he couldn't control his tears from dripping wet his clothes.
He felt that his wife had only lived a good life in the past few years when she first married him.
At that time, the family still lived in high-rise houses, and the land of the "new house" and the "old house" added up to hundreds of acres. His old father still lived a leisurely life as a landlord squire every day.
Since 1959, the days have deteriorated so badly that in the end I can't even eat.
He felt that although his mother married into a landlord family, she had also worked hard all her life and starved to death when she arrived.
After his mother died, he and his father also found their eldest brother and a neighbor uncle. Four people put their mother in a coffin and carried her up the mountain in one go.
But that time everyone was not as hungry as they are now. Together, the four of them quickly dug a big pit, put their mother's coffin in, and soon built a large grave bag.
He really didn't expect that after his father buried his mother for three months, he also went there.
The only thing he felt relieved was that his parents had prepared coffins for themselves early when they had money. Otherwise, he really doesn't know where to get the money to buy for them.
07
The sky suddenly cleared, the sun came out lazily, and after a while the sky became tile-blue and tile-blue.
In a trance, he found a dozen pigeons flying in the air.
Rubbing the eyes again, it turned out to be an illusion, there is not even a sparrow in the air, where did the pigeon come from.
He used to keep a dozen pigeons. The pair of small breeding pigeons were brought back to him by the fourth father who worked in the outer area, and the fourth father said that it was sent by someone else, and he had no time to raise it, so let him raise it.
Soon the pair of pigeons grew into a dozen, a large flock.
At that time, there were no public canteens, and every family could still eat and there was still some surplus food at home to raise these pigeons.
His father was against him raising pigeons, and he felt it was too wasteful of food.
Because the pigeon was brought back by his fourth brother, he did not object to it. The money used by the big family was taken back by the fourth brother, who was an education instructor in the outer district.
After the land was confiscated after liberation, there was no more rental income.
In 1960, there was little food left in the family, and my father was forced to sell all the dozen pigeons he had raised. He knew that although he was unhappy in the future, he did not quarrel with his father.
08
He went to his father's new grave and sat down.
He remembered the first quarrel with his father a few years ago over pigeon-keeping pigeon.
My father said that raising pigeons was too wasteful of food and said that he would sell them all. For the first time in his life, he confronted his father and said, "Raising pigeons is not a waste of food, and pigeons are given by four fathers and cannot be sold." ”
Although the father was a little angry, he heard his son say this, but he didn't say anything more.
From childhood he was an obedient child. Both grandfather and grandmother were especially fond of him. Because he has beautiful eyebrows, sweet mouth, and smart people, the uncle, the third father, and the fourth father all like him very much.
The uncle often asked him to memorize the articles taught by Mr. Private.
The third father told him the story he heard when he was a soldier in the Kuomintang security brigade.
He was a little curious about the appearance of the third father. The third father is taller than ordinary people, and his eyes look a bit like foreigners. He felt that his surname was most likely given by the Han emperor after the Hu people entered the Central Plains.
The fourth father talked to him the most. The two people are not much different in age, and the fourth father is a person who can quickly accept new things.
The fourth father studied private school, the new elementary school of the Republic of China, and the county middle school. As soon as the PLA came, he immediately joined the land reform task force.
He didn't understand why his father couldn't follow the example of his fourth father and quickly adapt to the trend of the times. What are you doing in that land that is no longer your own?
If the fourth father had not actively participated in the revolution, his family would have been classified as landlords rather than the last middle peasants.
09
At his father's grave, he remembered his cousin, Niu Po, and his fourth mother, who died at the beginning of the year.
At the beginning of the year, the fourth father's son fell ill, and he carried his little cousin and his fourth mother to the district hospital more than ten miles away. Although it was the second largest hospital in the county, the little cousin became sick and starved to death.
He carried his dead little cousin home with his fourth mother. The fourth mother cried all the way and said that the fourth father was not. It is said that the four fathers only care about work, regardless of the life and death of their mothers.
He persuaded the fourth mother all the way not to complain about the fourth father, let alone cry anymore, crying bad body, no one can help her.
After returning home, my father found a cypress box and packed his nephew in it, carrying it to the back mountain. He also followed his father with a hoe.
The mother has been at home to persuade the fourth mother who is crying silently and her voice is hoarse.
He helped his father dig a small pit and bury his little cousin.
A month later, the fourth father came home and secretly finished a pack of paper cigarettes at his son's grave. He secretly followed the fourth father and found that he was wiping tears and his eyes were red.
10
More than a month after the fourth father left home to go to work, the fourth mother also died due to excessive grief and hunger.
My father told him to go to school to take a leave of absence first, and then go to the place where my fourth father worked to call him home.
He inquired all the way and walked for five hours to reach the district office where his fourth father worked.
He choked up and told his fourth father: "The fourth mother left last night. ”
The fourth father asked him to lie down in his dormitory for a while. He first went to arrange the work of the past few days, and then went to ask the district leaders for a leave.
At noon, the uncle and nephew had lunch in the canteen of the district office and hurried home.
On the way home, the fourth father ordered a coffin for the fourth mother in the town and asked the boss to deliver it immediately.
In this way, he and his father, four fathers, and eldest brother buried the fourth mother next to his little cousin's small grave.
After everyone left, the fourth father was still squatting next to the fourth mother's grave and smoking alone.
He also stood beside his fourth father and did not leave. The fourth father choked and said, "I'm really sorry for your fourth mother, and I'm sorry for your little brother Niu Po." I was too busy with work, and I was in charge of more than a dozen junior high schools and elementary schools in the district. ”
He said: "Fourth father, don't feel too guilty, the cow mother died of illness, and the fourth mother is too sad." ”
11
Sitting next to his father's grave, he really felt like crying without tears. Within a year, he lost four close relatives. He didn't understand why so many people would suddenly starve to death?
Looking at the path down the hill that leads to the town, he remembers going to school with her every day.
She is the daughter of a neighbor's uncle and is now a freshman in high school. Her dream is to go to medical school and become a white soldier.
Instead, he wanted to go to a polytechnic university and become an engineer in the future.
Whenever it rains, the trail gets particularly muddy. They would take off their cloth shoes and put them in their school bags, and when they were about to reach school, they washed their feet at the edge of the field and put on their shoes to go to school.
He had a little affection for her hazy, but couldn't tell if he was really in love with her.
He felt that he was no longer afraid of the dead, let alone ghosts. He buried four relatives with his own hands in one year, and watching them as if they were asleep was not scary at all.
12
Soon to enter the third year of high school. Students also began to talk about college entrance examination volunteers.
A classmate who usually has a good relationship with him and is a fellow villager said that he only filled out one volunteer: the Department of Journalism of Peking University, and if he couldn't pass the exam, he wouldn't go to university.
Later, this classmate's volunteer was filled in the same way. He was not admitted to the journalism department of Peking University. But after returning to his hometown, he started as a commune broadcaster and eventually became the secretary of the prefecture-level municipal party committee.
He was selected by the People's Air Force, directly exempted from the college entrance examination to enter the Air Force Aviation School, and after graduation, he worked as a mechanic in the Air Force.
He was a little hesitant, kind of wanting to give up college, wanting to work early. He wanted to go to college on his own, who would care about his younger siblings?
He decided to go to his fourth father to discuss it. When he found the district office where the fourth father worked, the fourth father was happily coming out of the office of the secretary of the district party committee.
The fourth father happily told him: "On the recommendation of the secretary of the district party committee, the county party committee decided to let me go to Guangxiang Commune to be the secretary of the party committee!" ”
He hurriedly congratulated the fourth father. Then he told his fourth father that he wanted to give up college, work early, and take care of his younger siblings.
The fourth father patted him on the shoulder and said, "You are such a stupid child, don't worry about going to college." The Air Force has chosen you, go and do a good job. My younger siblings handed it over to me. When I went to become secretary of the Guangxiang Commune, I would take all the children with me, and this time I moved all their hukou. Now you should rest assured! ”
Listening to the fourth father's words, he felt that he could go to the Air Force Aviation School with confidence.
He happily returned to school ready for military school.
Soon the cadres sent by the Air Force to pick up the new students came. He put on his military hat, yellow clothes, blue pants, and went home.
The younger brothers and sisters saw that his brother was wearing a military uniform and came up to touch his new military uniform, and their eyes were full of envy and joy.
He told his younger siblings that his father would take them all to the commune where he worked. In the future, all people are no longer allowed to call Fourth Dad, and they all call Daddy the same as Cai Mei, including him. The eldest aunt's daughter should not be called fourth uncle, but also father.
This group of children without parents has a new home, and the fourth father has also become a father. They called it like this all their lives until the old man died.
He is the kindest uncle under the sun! My father's fourth father, I called grandpa all my life.
Writing this, I couldn't control myself from shedding tears.
The title photo was taken by my father when he was in the company after graduating from the Air Force Military Academy.
Friends who read this article, please like and follow, thank you!
The pictures in the article, including the caption, are all from the Internet, and if there is any infringement, they will be deleted immediately