I planned to travel with my mother before the Spring Festival, I don't remember how many places we walked together, and I forgot when it started, and there will always be her shadow in the memory of the trip.
She departed from Zhengzhou Airport and we met in Xishuangbanna. Sitting on a plane, in the roar and turbulence of the air currents, I always think of the impermanence of fate, and many moments flash in my mind.
When I was a child, my family was still in Beijing, and we lived very close to Nanyuan Airport, which was out of use a few years ago, but at that time there were planes flying overhead every day. Once my grandmother came to live for a while, she also likes to watch planes, and every day she moves a small stool to sit at the door to watch. My mother was very busy with work at that time and had no time to accompany her, so she went to the airport by herself, and when she returned to her hometown, she mentioned "Beijing's big plane".
"Don't look at it, when I make money, I'll take you to the plane. Mom said to grandma. Just like those classic movie scenes, this sentence also becomes the beginning of the story.
Many years later, in 2015, my grandmother and my mother finally got on a plane for the first time and started their first trip to Guilin. Sitting on the plane, excited, grandma was more afraid, the seats of the two were not bought together, only to find out when they got off the plane that grandma had not eaten the plane meal, could not eat, too nervous.
The six-day trip has become their best memory, and it has also become a regret in my mother's heart: "Why didn't I take her to more places earlier." On the second trip a year later, my grandmother was paralyzed and in a wheelchair, and that time it became extremely difficult.
Grandma's trip to Guilin before she fell ill
I told my mother that I would write the story of her and my grandmother, and that I would submit it the next day, and asked her to help me recall the details of the past. I woke up in the morning and saw the "small composition" of the clip she sent on my mobile phone, the time was more than 11 o'clock in the evening, two o'clock in the morning, and 5 o'clock in the morning...... In her recollections, I learned more details.
In the fall of 2016, 71-year-old grandmother woke up early and started cooking in the kitchen. The uncle, who was still asleep, was suddenly awakened by his grandmother's screams, and when he ran to the kitchen, his grandmother had fainted on the ground. Later, she was quickly sent to our county hospital and diagnosed with acute cerebellar hemorrhage. On the way to the municipal hospital, due to the rapid development of the disease, my grandmother fell into a coma.
On the third day after the operation, because of the severe hydrocephalus, the doctor issued a critical illness notice, asked the family to talk, told the family to have a second operation, and asked the family to ask for their opinions.
Because it was more than 8 o'clock in the evening, the doctor said that the patient's life was in danger and that he could stop breathing at any time, and asked the family to make a quick choice. That night the relatives held a meeting, everyone had to express their opinions, and among the grandmother's siblings, one suggested giving up the treatment, not wanting to let her body suffer a second injury and "toss" again. In this half hour, they will decide on an uncertain operation, and finally everyone listens to the mother's decision and signs the second surgery consent form.
On the seventh day after the operation, although my grandmother was temporarily saved, she was still in a coma, and the ICU bed was tight, and the doctor urged her to transfer to a general ward for treatment. At that time, I called my mother and asked if I wanted to send my grandmother to a better hospital at the provincial level, and she immediately went to ask the doctor for advice, and the doctor said, "You shout, if you can open your eyes, there is still value in transferring to another hospital." ”
One day, when my uncle called my mother, my grandmother suddenly opened her eyes, and everyone cried. Eight days after the comatose grandmother was transferred to the Henan Provincial People's Hospital, the doctor told the family to talk to the patient more to stimulate the brain to help wake up early. My grandmother has four daughters and a son, and they take their mattresses to make bunks on the floor of the hospital and talk to them every day.
In the text sent to me by my mother, she wrote: "Half a month later, my mother finally opened her eyes amid the thousands of screams of the children. After a month of treatment, the number of tubes inserted in my mother's body gradually decreased, and her speech gradually recovered, and her physical activities improved day by day. On the 48th day of my mother's illness, I returned to my hometown hospital, and more than a month later, the last two tubes on my mother's body, the gastric tube and the urinary tube, were finally removed. A lengthy rehabilitation program followed, allowing the mother to slowly learn to eat, sit and move, and move her limbs, but she was unable to walk alone due to the death of cerebellar cells and loss of balance. The process of rehabilitation treatment is very difficult, due to the influence of the disease, the mother's intelligence is not as good as before, like a rebellious child, in order to encourage her to actively cooperate with the doctor to recover. I promised her that if she cooperated with the doctor to recover, she would take her to the place she had wanted to go for a long time - Bama, the 'hometown of the world's longevity'. ”
When my grandmother was in my hometown, I was very obsessed with listening to lectures on health products, and when I saw it in the tabloids, I had to sign up immediately. The "teacher" in the class talked about health knowledge, and after a few classes, he began to fool the elderly into buying products. Grandma is a big fan of "Teacher", and she also spent more than 4,000 yuan to buy a water dispenser known as "small molecule water". In the mouth of the "teacher", my grandmother learned that there is a place called Bama in Guangxi, where many long-lived old people live, all because they drank the local spring water, which was called "small molecule water".
This water dispenser has become grandma's baby, she has to drink a glass every morning, and her family also knows about Bama in her mouth. In Grandma's narration, Bama is a paradise, a place of dreams, so beautiful that it seems to not exist, as if it may not be reached in this life.
But they did. Take a paralyzed old man and drive 4,000 kilometers back and forth, just to fulfill a promise.
After half a year of treatment, my grandmother finally stabilized and was able to be discharged from the hospital. A week later, my uncle modified his van and changed the back seat into a "bed" so that my grandmother could lie down. They brought oil, salt, sauce and vinegar, pots and pans, rice, flour, and soy milk makers...... There was also grandma's wheelchair, aunt, uncle and mother, a group of four people drove for two days and took grandma to Bama.
After walking on the road for two days and one night, the group arrived in Bama, and the aunt and mother pushed the grandmother out of the door
"This is where my mother has been thinking about it for many years. My mother said that every day they would push her grandmother to go outside to breathe the fresh air of nature, "so that she can feel the beauty of the world more and arouse her yearning for life." A few days later, they came to Beihai Silver Beach again, and my grandmother couldn't walk, so she sat on the beach and played, happy like a child.
Before her illness, Grandma was a life-loving, cheerful person who had her "friends" wherever she went. Different from other old ladies' hobbies, her idol is Zhong Hanliang, Yang Mi and Hawick Lau are often on her lips, and there are posters of Zhong Hanliang at home. She also likes to listen to the radio, but it's all celebrity gossip. My mother's family was very poor when she was a child, but my grandmother always took her daughters to buy beautiful clothes. "Whatever, eat it today and don't care about tomorrow. Grandma always practiced her life motto.
After getting sick, my grandmother's temper also changed a lot, "In the next few years, although I worked very hard to let my mother recover and exercise every day, many of the injuries caused to her by cerebral hemorrhage were irreversible, and my mother has been unable to take care of herself." In fact, when a person suffers from a serious illness, the physical and mental pain makes the mood very low, and it is not easy to rekindle the expectation of life. Mom wrote.
2023 is the seventh year that my grandmother is sick and bedridden, and in the past few years, four daughters and a son have taken turns to take care of her.
But my grandmother was admitted to the hospital again with a sudden cerebral infarction, and her four daughters and one son formed a nursing team again and set up a bunk in the hospital. During the three months of hospitalization, my grandmother's language and eating skills were slowly recovering, and my uncle was responsible for her three meals a day, cooking at home every day and sending them to the hospital.
"Fate often plays tricks on people, and in June 2023, which is also the day my mother is about to be discharged from the hospital, my only brother died of a heart attack after delivering his mother's last breakfast in the morning. Mom wrote.
The night before, they were still chatting in the hospital until late, they hadn't spoken for such a long time, they had talked for so long, they had met the next morning, and after a few hours, they were separated forever.
Life is always full of accidents, and it also started when my grandmother got sick, my mother's attitude towards life changed, and she began to like to travel. When you go out with her, you can always feel happy, the flowers on the side of the road, the clouds in the sky, and you can also find different fun in the ordinary scenery, at this time, you will forget the troubles caused by many accidents in life, and the sentence echoes in your mind, "Whatever, eat today and don't care about tomorrow." ”
In the last paragraph of the essay, she wrote: "Today is the eighth year of my mother's illness, and in the days of taking care of my mother, those happy and tired times have made us stronger, learned to enjoy the state of mind of the moment, learned to accept the storm, and also made me believe that as long as there is love and expectation in our hearts, everything is on the way to getting better." ”
Southern People Weekly reporter Liu Luming
Editor-in-charge: Li Tuimao