To my distant father
Liang Lutao, Liang Luhong, Liang Lubo
Today, the 13th day of the second lunar month, is the 10th anniversary of my father's death. When I came back from my father's grave, I turned out the commemorative articles published by my third brother Lu Hong in newspapers and periodicals such as "Hong Kong Wen Wei Po", "Financial Times", and "100 Essays", plus the manuscript just written by my second brother Lu Bo, and combined them into "Three Questions for My Distant Father" to express my nostalgia for my father.
Liang Lutao
March 22, 2024
Strong lives can be so fragile
Liang Lutao
My father was admitted to the county hospital because of a fever. My father said that he took a bath two days ago, and the solar water at home was not hot, so he boiled two pots of water and flushed it, and he caught a cold. When asked if he was unwell, he said he didn't feel any discomfort. But I knew he was definitely not feeling well. Because I said to rub his belly, his eyebrows actually picked a mouthful—my father never cried out about itching, and never let us knead him—I would never have thought that after just one night, my father would have died without even saying a word! Watching the doctors and nurses press and rescue my father in vain, at that moment, I suddenly felt that no matter how strong a life is, it will be so fragile, so fragile that it is so vulnerable!
(a)
My father was born in January 1934, the lunar month. On the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, my father, who graduated from junior high school, was recruited to the county supply and marketing cooperative. What kind of joy did the new country, the new regime, and the new life bring to my father, who had just entered society? My father never talked about his experience, but I can fully imagine the vigorous and passionate appearance of my father at that time. However, my father is introverted by nature and does not like publicity, his joy and excitement will only be buried in the bottom of his heart and will not be shown. Once, I accidentally looked through the unpublished novels and screenplays written by my father in the 50s of the last century, and the words of the works were soaked in the passion and yearning of the young people of that era.
But I later realized that in the 50s and 60s of the last century, my father was in adolescence. By today's standards, his father's education level is not very high, but he is a romantic literati in his bones. What he desires in his heart must be the kind of married life where husband and wife sing and follow each other, love each other, and red sleeves add fragrance. And the mother who married home according to the words of the matchmaker according to his parents' orders was obviously not his intended person. My mother has never been to school and is illiterate, but she has a very strong personality, is vicious and hateful, dares to speak and act, is straightforward, chivalrous, and can't give my father the kind of delicate feelings he wants. Probably because of this, although my father worked in the county seat only a mile away from home, he rarely came home. In addition, my father's brothers and sisters-in-law did not like my mother, and my father could not hear anything favorable to my mother when he returned home. Therefore, the father, who was already silent, had little to say when he saw his mother. For as long as I can remember in the late '50s, I had barely seen my father's smiling face at home. What impressed me the most was that my parents often quarreled and divorced, and my father even touched my mother.
Although her mother was unconvinced, she actually liked her father in her heart. At that time, my father was fair-looking, with clear eyebrows and beautiful eyes, humble and polite, polite, and polite, not smiling or talking. In the summer, he would wear a snow-white shirt in his blue pants, and in the winter, he would wear a "uniform jacket" with a velvet collar, and a gray-white wool scarf around his neck, exuding a bookish atmosphere unique to the intellectuals of that era. My mother, who grew up in the countryside, had no reason not to like my father at that time. Therefore, no matter how noisy my father was, no matter how my father's family isolated her and beat her, and even I remember that my father brought home a photo of a young female colleague when he was engaged in the "Four Cleans" in other places, but my mother persevered in the end. My mother later said that it was because of me and my second brother, and she couldn't let her two sons have no father. This is, of course, an important reason. But I think the reason why my father and mother were able to grow old together may have a lot to do with my father's innate strength and forbearance. In the early 50s, it was once common practice for cadres to "stop their wives and remarry" in the city. It is said that for this reason, the central government specially requested that the traditional drama "Qin Xianglian" be staged to warn those large and small "Chen Shimei". Although his father accepted a lot of new knowledge and ideas, the traditional Chinese moral concept and moral code is a peak that can never be surpassed in his heart. Faced with what he thinks is a painful marriage, he can escape self-abuse and self-restraint by going home less or even not at all, without abnormal motivation, he is destined not to take the last step.
(b)
In fact, the marriage and family life experienced by my father in the 50s and 60s of the last century was nothing more than the self-seeking troubles of the young intellectuals of that era who "worried about the new words" - the unsatisfactory married life has always been a topic of "cutting and cutting, and sorting out and messing" - will not have much impact on his life pursuit and passion for life. But what really brought fatal damage to my father's soul was that special era.
I heard my father say that after the movement began in 1966, the county party committee was paralyzed, and my father was transferred back to the county from the front line of the "Four Cleansing" and was clearly the person in charge of the county party committee office, whose main task was to receive "Red Guards". At that time, the "Red Guard" movement in the county was in full swing, and those middle school students who did not know the height of the sky and the height of the earth tore up the red flag, tied up armbands, and organized an organization to make a "revolution." A classmate who had just entered junior high school with me became a rebel "commander" with his "root red Miaozheng". My father said that at that time, because of his work, he was familiar with the leaders of the "rebels" in the county. The father treats them as children, and he must have given them some admonition and protection. My father was 32 years old. I can fully imagine how my young father, who had always regarded revolutionary work as his life, would have devoted himself unreservedly to the tasks assigned to him by the Party organization. However, my father did not expect that when the "Red Guard" movement liquidated the factional organization in the later stage, it may be because of his dedication that he would somehow become a victim of the movement. During that time, my father would come home almost every day. Although he still maintained his usual restraint and few words, because I saw those big-character posters about him all over the streets and alleys of the county, I felt that my father's eyes were full of horror and helplessness. After that, my father was stopped from working, his salary was stopped, he was locked up in a county guest house to attend a so-called "study class", and he was not allowed to return home for more than nine months, and his family was not allowed to visit him casually.
In the second half of 1970, it was probably impossible to convict my father of any crimes, so they released him. However, the newly reinstated county party committee was not allowed to go back, and my father was "reassigned" to work in the county pharmaceutical company. The heads of the company are all young people who have newly "integrated" into the team, and they lack a minimum of respect for my father, an old cadre from the county party committee. They thought that their father was sent to the company for "transformation", either arranging for their father to work in the workshop like a worker, or asking him to go to the countryside in a remote mountainous area where no one wanted to go. You must know that my father was only 36 years old at that time, which was the age to produce results in his career, but he was deprived of the right to participate in normal work. Trapped in such an unclear situation, there must be endless pain in my father's heart. But my father was not born to be the kind of "crying child", he would only silently superimpose the pain imposed on him by the outside world. He did not know that this superposition of pain, like a blunt knife cutting through flesh, would cause the greatest harm to a person in the years of mercilessness, and that this injury, though invisible, was more cruel and tragic than any visible injury. In the spring of 1971, his father, who had been repeatedly injured, finally couldn't hold on, and the devil in his heart suddenly dominated his thinking world, and the roaring torrent suddenly broke through the embankment of his soul - his father went insane!
It was one of the saddest days in my young memory! I had just entered high school, my second brother was in the third grade of elementary school, and my mother was pregnant with my third brother. His father was mentally ill, and people outside regarded him as a "madman", and his home became his only place to seek solace. In order to treat his father's illness, to prevent his father from self-harm and suicide, and to keep his father's salary that had been discounted due to illness to support the whole family, his mother had to let his second brother take a leave of absence, and the mother and son lived in the city with their father inseparably. I live at home alone, and while I go to school, I go to the production team in my spare time to earn some work. During that time, my father, mother, and second brother became "regulars" at the county hospital, and I would also use Sundays to ride around to find medical advice for my father, and of course, many witch doctors in the countryside. I saw with my own eyes that all kinds of gentlemen and doctors who had been invited from all over the world poured many kinds of medicines into my father's mouth, and pierced countless long and short needles into my father's body. I also witnessed how my father maintained his usual strength and forbearance in the face of illness. Nearly a year passed until the winter of that year, when my father's illness gradually improved.
(c)
Around 1980, the central government began to implement policies with great fanfare for cadres who had been persecuted and mishandled. We all asked my father to appeal to the above and ask for the implementation of the relevant policies. The father, who never asked for help, was accompanied and supervised by his mother, and for the first time went around asking for help because of his own affairs. I also approached the then county party secretary through a friend in the press. The reply was received that my father was not a member of the authorities, had not been overthrown, had not worn a "hat", and had not even made any conclusions, so there was no policy to be implemented; the salary that had been suspended for running the study class was later repaid, and the arrangement for going to a pharmaceutical company after the study class was also a normal work transfer. The people my father was looking for included leaders, colleagues, and participants in dealing with my father. Some of these people expressed sympathy, some were puzzled, some expressed disgust, and some even sneered at each other. Once, my father and I went to the provincial party committee to find a colleague of my father, who had reached the level of an official or department, but the colleague was extremely impatiently reprimanded. Even so, I never heard my father complain and complain, never heard a word of disrespect from society to anyone.
I am the eldest son in the family. When I was a teenager, my father rarely came home, and soon after my father returned to the family due to illness, I joined the army and was far away from home, and I didn't really live with my father for a long time, so I was a stranger to my father. During the period after my father's death, I have been reminiscing about the precious moments of my life with my father, and trying to enter my father's inner world and restore a real father. However, I find that my mind often short-circuits. From a secular point of view, my father is not a successful person in his life, and he even has some pockets. After working for decades, he didn't get mixed with an official and a half-job, and he was inexplicably beaten up during the movement, but he couldn't get an explanation, and the children and his wife hardly had anything to do with him for decades, but they were a lot of troubled by him. In the face of social discrimination, in the face of all kinds of injustices and misfortunes imposed on him by the times, he does not fight, does not complain, and seems to only swallow his anger and accept it. But when I think about it, I can't help but admit that our family is outstanding in the village, and my father's children and grandchildren are also excellent. And this outstanding, this excellent, all show the subtle influence of my father, that is, the dignity of being a human being. My father lived in an era when there was no fairness and justice, and he understood that he was powerless to change the environment and change his fate, so he used strength as a spear, forbearance as a shield, and a transcendent attitude towards life, not demanding others, not wronging himself, and always upholding his dignity as a human being. "Life is precious, but dignity is even more valuable. With this perseverance, my father was able to deal with everything outside of his body indifferently.
My father is a retired cadre, and his medical expenses can be reimbursed according to regulations. But in the past few years, I have hardly seen my father take medicine and see a doctor. I was also responsible for most of my mother's daily medication, and my father didn't take medicine himself and hardly took it. Before my father died, we also complained that my father was not sick, and he did not know how to understand the pain of my mother when she was sick. However, after my father's death, when we went to reimburse my father's hospitalization expenses, we learned that the county pharmaceutical company had been transformed into a private pharmacy a few years ago, and the medical insurance that was originally paid by the pharmaceutical company for my father had already stopped paying for no reason under the pretext that he could take medicine at the pharmacy. My father usually had a headache and brain fever to take a few pills, and he had to run upstairs and downstairs to find the pharmacy manager for approval. With his father's character, he would rather be tortured by illness and not take medicine, and he would not give up his face to ask the manager to sign that word......
My father walked away like this, so simply, so resolutely, and so carelessly. The distant father's face was the same as usual, except that there was no snoring and no breathing, as if he was asleep, peaceful, peaceful, and dignified. I know that my father is using his last dignity to complete the practice of his life's perseverance.
April 10, 2014 in Shijiazhuang
A big slope and two faces of his father
Liang Luhong
I don't know if it's because of the strong wine in Xinjiang, or the eldest brother's reminiscences about his father fermented in a dream, and he woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning, and woke up so thoroughly and cleanly. You must know that 5 o'clock in the mainland is still groggy in Korla, Xinjiang, in the second half of the night. As someone who has been dealing with words on and off for more than twenty years, I should also learn from my eldest brother and write something to my father and myself. Of course, if my son, who is in junior high school, is interested, it is better to read it carefully, because I am both my father's son and my son's father.
The eldest brother's essay is linear, from his father's youth to his death, throughout the entire Jiazi time that his father accompanied him. I wasn't as lucky as my eldest brother, I was born late, and as far as I can remember, my father was middle-aged. But at the same time I was luckier than my eldest brother, because my father's whole youth did not seem to be his own, much less his son's. And because of my father's illness, I grew up under my father's watch. So my memories of my father are lumpy, concrete, specific to the subtlety, specific to the sudden departure of my father can create a huge void that cannot be repaired. At this moment, in Korla, near the early hours of the morning, when I recalled my father through the computer screen, my father in front of me was concretized into two completely different faces, and a vague climb that had been precipitated into the depths of my memory.
One of the two faces is red, hideous, morbid, and ruthless, and the other is spring-breeze, kind, calm, and warm. The two faces are intertwined with my father's own struggles and tames, suffering and joy, and at the same time entangled with my hatred and love, affection and pain for my father. People often say that my father is strict and loving to my mother, but when I was a child, my father never let my strict mother beat me. But that didn't stop me from hating and even disgusting my father. The eldest brother wrote in the article that the year my mother was pregnant with me, 1971, a special era, my father was schizophrenic. This schizophrenia later seemed to be better on the face of it, and it passed. But in fact, the damage it brought to my father accompanied him for most of his life. Because of this schizophrenia, the character of the father was almost completely changed. After his illness, the angelic side and the devilish side are entangled in him, and they are vividly displayed. I know that my father's hideous devilish face was never directed at me. Even when his brain was at its most chaotic, even when he turned a deaf ear to my cries, he never poured out his violence on me. I hated him for his gratuitous violence against my mother, for him to make me feel ashamed.
My doorstep is the only way for most of the children in the village to go to school. On their way to school, there is often a "good show" to watch, that is, my parents fight in the street, and for a child from a few years old to a teenager, the humiliation and hurt are naturally beyond the experience of ordinary people. Later, when I went to the city to go to middle school and then became a soldier, one was less when I saw them fighting, and the other was that I had a certain understanding and sympathy for my father's history, and I transferred my hatred for my father to hatred for that era, and this sense of shame gradually disappeared. On the contrary, sometimes I have some opinions about my mother and persuade her to tolerate it, because her father was sick, and she was not sick. But the stubborn mother firmly believes that her father was kidnapped by an unknown demon when he was sick, and someone who knows her that she must fight resolutely at this time, which is actually fighting the devil on my father. As a result, my mother devoted more energy to praying to the gods and worshipping the Buddha, and invited the gods from all walks of life to launch an attack on the devil in my father's heart.
When my father was not sick, he was really as quiet and clear as an angel. I sat at the desk to write and draw, because at this time, my father had no one to write anymore, so he could only write by himself, and he read the college Chinese and English textbooks used by his eldest brother for self-study exams over and over again. I still remember that my father published a poem in the prefectural magazine, and my father was very happy and kept it all the time. His father's education was not high, and he joined the work at the age of fifteen, but because of his talent and diligence, coupled with the inheritance of his grandfather's elegant and sensitive learning, his father was once one of the few intellectual young people in the county that year. Even when he was sick later, in the interval between the devil leaving him, he still showed a kind of elegance and politeness in his bones, and I never heard my sober father say a single foul word, nor did I hear him complain about anything, even though we all thought that he had suffered a lot of injustice. The eldest brother described his father's character as forbearance and strength, but I think it is more of his father's innate indifference. After my son was born, he and his mother came to live with me in the city and help me with the baby. At that time, the devil only occasionally came out at about nine o'clock in the morning to make trouble, and most of the rest of the time, the father was loving, smiling, tired of his grandson, changing some old objects into toys for his grandson, tinkering, frugal and delicate, meticulous, neat and elegant.
Leo Tolstoy said that happy families are all the same, and unhappy families have their own misfortunes. Here I also think of a saying to my father, that hate is concrete and sharp, while love is often trivial and vague. The lightness, calmness, calmness, and generosity brought to me by an angelic father may be trivial to the point of not being worth mentioning. But it is subtle, aggressive, pervasive, and can still be felt today.
As for the uphill road, it was buried deep in my consciousness, and I think of it when I think of my father. It was the slope that my father had to climb when he took my mother and me on the road to implement the policy in the early eighties. The slope was very steep, and every time I climbed, my father would get out of the bike and push me, and I sat on the front beam of the bike, and my father's heavy breathing sprayed into my left heel. The eldest brother mentioned in the article that the implementation of the policy was finally over. Why do you mention this slope here? I think there seems to be some kind of secret connection between my father's two faces. As far as I know, the policy was implemented at that time to convert my second brother's hukou to non-farming. Although the matter did not come to fruition, the second brother also came out through his own efforts. Just like that slope, the painstaking climb seems futile, and there is always a good result in the dark, just like the father, a man so delicate and graceful and dignified, who sometimes had to look terrible like the devil. In the past year, the devil's father seems to have never had another seizure, and in the end he has achieved an angelic and peaceful father.
The day dawned in Korla. Father, you're all right in heaven. My son is not filial, but when you were eighty years old, you traveled to Xinjiang and did not see you for the last time. If you can meet it in the next life, I am willing to be your son!
2014.4.13 新疆库尔勒
Four generations of grandchildren
The last night before my father died
Liang Lubo
March 13, 2014, the 13th day of the second lunar month, a day that will never be forgotten. That morning, the father who gave me life and raised me was gone, leaving no words. Although the medical staff who rushed to the bedside after hearing the news tried their best to save him, my eldest brother and I were beside him and shouted in our ears - "Daddy", "Daddy"!!, "Daddy!!...... , my father's closed eyes never opened again.
His father was a retired cadre, and the reimbursement rate for hospitalization was relatively high, but his father, who was physically strong, rarely had to deal with the hospital, and this hospitalization was only a short day and two nights, and he failed to survive, and his life ended at the age of 81.
On the evening of March 11 of that year, as soon as I got home from work, my eldest brother called to say that my father was hospitalized, and my cousin and nephew in the front yard of my hometown had sent my father to the hospital. asked me to pick him up by car and hurry from the provincial capital to the county hospital in my hometown.
We had never been to the county hospital when it was relocated to a new location, and we inquired all the way to the county hospital and it was completely dark when we arrived at the county hospital. In the corridor of the hospital, I happened to meet my cousin and nephew pushing my father to the CT room. From afar, I saw my father shivering in a wheelchair, one eye (my father's other eye was blind due to an accident a few years ago) and staring hard at my brother and sister. My eldest brother and I hurriedly ran over and pushed my father through a passage and into the CT room. My trembling father got out of his wheelchair trembling and struggled to get into the CT bed.
It was not too early to finish the examinations required for hospitalization, and the medical staff gave my father an infusion without waiting for a rest when he pushed his father to the bed in the ward and lay down. A meek and taciturn father who has been gentle all his life, he closes his eyes and tastes the drops of medicine entering his body.
After the tension, the peace in the ward returned. We advised my cousin and nephew to go back and rest. They said that the first night would see how it went, and then the next day. So, the four of us crawled or leaned in front of the hospital bed to accompany the nurse until dawn amid the sound of infusions that did not stop all night.
It may be that a few bottles of liquid medicine worked last night. When I woke up in the morning, my father's condition improved greatly. The sick meal he was given a small bun with pumpkin filling, and he ate two with millet porridge. After that, he briefly freshened up, and I accompanied him to the window of the hospital room and looked out. My father, who had lived and worked in the county for most of his life, saw the scaffolding being busy opposite the new hospital and muttered a few sighs.
We were all relieved to see our father like this. I discussed with my eldest brother that my cousin and nephew, who were the first round older than me, to go home and rest. My eldest brother, who is 9 years older than me, went back to his home in the county town to tell my mother, who was worried about my father, about the situation, and by the way, he could sleep well, and come back to replace me the next day. So, before dinner, I sent my eldest brother back to his home in the county seat. I want to be alone tonight, and when my father rests after the infusion, I will also lie in the corner of the hospital bed and take a nap. I was nervous last night, and the four of them didn't rest well.
I really didn't expect that this was the last night of my father's life.
At first, after the infusion, my father muttered intermittently that he had peed his pants and wanted to take off the autumn pants inside. I quickly changed him into a hospital gown, washed his pants and underwear in the bathroom and put them on the radiator, and changed them for him in the morning.
At this time, I looked around at all the beds in the ward, and the patient number and the accompanying person began to fall asleep one after another, and when I looked at my phone, it was already more than 12 o'clock at night. After a day of infusion, my father should also get a good night's sleep. I persuaded him to close his eyes and rest, but he "belched" but "hummed", and I asked him, "What do you think of Gan'erlan?" My father "hummed" and said, "Don't do it (not much)". Since I was a child, I saw my father for the first time. I feel that he is in pain, but he says "don't do it", which must be wrong. I hurried to the doctor on duty. The doctor who just took over happened to be the eldest daughter of my buddy who grew up in the same village. She immediately came over to take a look, and gave her father another infusion and said: It's so late to observe the infusion first, and then look at the situation.
The father who gave the liquid again did not stop "humming", and I said I'll rub your belly for you, right? I rubbed his belly, and he obediently cooperated, instinctively making him lean towards me. I rubbed it for a while, and he said, "It's okay." I stopped and pulled the quilt for him, saying I'm looking at the infusion, you can sleep for a while. Is the liquid medicine working or is he really tired after tossing for more than half a day, although he did not fall asleep deeply, but the "hum" sound is quiet, intermittent, if there is nothing. I didn't get much rest for two nights, and I wanted to take a nap, but the thought of being on an infusion made me feel sleepy.
A few years ago, my wife was hospitalized, and because I was busy with work during the day, I was the escort at night. Once, I was so sleepy that I fell asleep, and the people in the same ward found that the infusion bottle was empty and quickly woke me up, and I still blame myself when I think about it. At this time, looking at my father's face and then at the ticking infusion tube, I silently prayed in my heart: I hope my father will get better tomorrow.
Before I knew it, the sky was already bright, and some of the people in the same ward began to wash up.
My eldest brother came from home, and the medical staff also began to change shifts, I looked at the autumn pants I washed last night and dried them, and put them on the head of the hospital bed to prepare to change them for my father at the right time. After the infusion, my father said to go to the bathroom, and my eldest brother and I helped him into the bathroom. He wanted to poop, so I hurried to the windowsill next to the hospital bed and took the small plastic cup that the doctor had ordered to leave a poop sample to the bathroom. At this time, my father couldn't squat down, and tossed back and forth for a while before picking up some poop. My eldest brother and I struggled to lift my father's pants and lift him to the ground before he could lie on the hospital bed. I then took the stool sample and sent it to the lab. I want to send it as soon as possible, and the test results may come out in the morning.
As soon as I left the ward and turned into the corridor of the hospital, an old man in the same ward caught up with me in a panic and said, "Hurry up, go back, your father is not good." I was so shocked that I didn't bother to put my stool on and went back to the ward.
At this time, my father's eyes were closed. Medical staff are rushing over one after another, and various measures such as oxygen delivery, artificial respiration, and chest compressions are being rescued in turn.
Seeing this scene, I was trembling with horror, and my hair stood on end. Continuously shouting "Daddy", "Daddy", "Daddy...... There was no reaction from the father. I was anxious, and loudly reprimanded the department director who was already sweating profusely at this time, and was nervous about rescuing him: "What have you done earlier? My father's condition is so serious, and none of you have come to say it, you ......" I was a little incoherent and a little incoherent when I was shocked and angry. Five or six paramedics ran around, chest compressions that didn't stop, and my father spat out a mouthful of blood as if he were asleep, and no matter how much we shouted, that eye never opened again.
Hurry up and call my mother and say I'm waiting to go back and pick you up. When her mother came, she was afraid that she would not be able to bear it, so she first led her to the doctor's office and sat down. I hugged my mother tightly with both hands, and I didn't know how to speak. My mother was surprisingly calm and said, "Is it because your father is not touched?" I nodded, tears welling up in my eyes. The mother said, "As soon as you call, I will guess it, let's go, go and see him".
At this time, the medical staff were still running around in front of the hospital bed in rotation. The mother looked at her father with his eyes closed, then at the busy doctors and nurses, and said, "If it doesn't work, don't rescue it, clean it up."
Later, I called my younger brother, who had been in Xinjiang for less than a week, but I didn't dare to say it at first, but I just asked him to hurry back. My brother also said on the phone: If it doesn't work, transfer to the hospital quickly. I said it was too late, so let's come back quickly.
My eldest brother and I called my sister-in-law, nephew, and daughter and son-in-law in Beijing, respectively, in the provincial capital, and the grandmen and daughters rushed to their hometowns as soon as possible......
On February 2 of the year my father died, my cousin in Shijiazhuang took advantage of his aunt and uncle to celebrate the New Year at his place and called my parents and my brother and family to reunite after the New Year. The few photos I took at the dinner party became the last record of my father's stay in the world.
I vividly remember that day my father was restless by the sofa after dinner, always thinking about leaving. His mother muttered a few words to him, and he sat down on the couch again. Later, I learned that a few days after my father returned to the county seat, he took a bath at home and caught a cold, and he had a cold and fever. He has always been physically tough, and he didn't take it seriously at first. Relatives came to play mahjong, and he jokingly said that it would be good to play mahjong. Two days have passed, and for many years, he has been opposed to his mother's always taking medicine, and he asked his mother to drink cold capsules. The next day, it was getting heavier and heavier. After dinner that day, he was incontinent, and his nose ran down for a long time and he didn't know how to wipe it. His mother changed his pants, but he couldn't get up when he lay down, and his thin and petite mother finally asked him to lie flat on the bed and change into clean autumn pants and underwear, so she hurriedly called his cousin in the front yard of his hometown. His cousin and nephew at home rushed from the village next to the county seat and rushed him to the hospital.
On the eve of my father's grave, I wrote a long poem "Father, Is Heaven Okay", which roughly outlined my father's impression in my heart in the language of poetry. My father had schizophrenia, I was young before he got sick, and he rarely came home, so his memory before his illness was vague. The only thing I remember is one time when he came home and walked into the alley, I was playing and shouted happily and pounced, and he picked me up and prick my stubble in the face with his stubble. Another one was that on the day he became ill, he asked his mother to find someone to go to the village primary school to call me back who was in class. At the table in the west room of the old house, he hugged me and cried. I was shocked and scared, I didn't know what happened to my father.
Once, when my father took me to his workplace, my silent father walked up to an office, picked up a brick, and smashed it at the windowpane. Looking through the smashed window, it was a middle-aged man reading papers at his desk. Seeing this, he ran out in a rage and shouted, "What are you doing?" and I hurried forward to apologize and tell him not to be like my sick father. From beginning to end, my father didn't say a word. But my heart was dripping with blood and tears: how could a father who had always been kind and docile be like this without the double blow of humiliation and injustice?
For more than ten years since then, my father's illness has gone from severe to mild, to irregular recurrence, and I have rarely had the opportunity to communicate with him. My father became both a familiar and a stranger to my heart.
On the 13th day of the second lunar month of this year, it has been ten years since my father died. In the past ten years, whenever I think of my father's last days in life, there is always an inexplicable heartache. After decades of wandering, I wanted to calm down and talk to my father about family life before and after retirement, and learn about his unusual first half of life, but it turned out to be a regret for eternal life.
Life is fragile, life is impermanent, and I can accompany my father who gave birth to me and raised me through the last night of my life, and I feel a little comforted in the heartache, and my heart still hurts in the comfort.
March 9, 2024 in Shijiazhuang
Brethren