Youth is still smiling at death
- Remembering her mother Yang Mo
Xu Ran
Every strand of flesh and blood that makes up the body of life, every bit of cell, I feel that the person who is closely related to my life is gone. The pain came to its fullest as she watched her flesh and blood turn to ashes, her still warm ashes in two bright red silk pockets. With a daughter's eternal love for her mother, I groped for and weighed the mother that someone else had handed over - a red silk bag. She was thrown back to us by death, ethereal, ethereal, jagged......
I have witnessed a lot of "mother-loss", mostly in the media. It turned out that I had no idea what the pain of losing my mother was!
In the first days, I used to wake up every morning to try to prove that it was just a nightmare. But when he finally got that confirmation, he began to mourn and weep in despair. In order to cherish myself, I have to find relief: I am in my 50s, and I still have my mother, isn't it more unfortunate for others to lose their mother at an early age? It is precisely because I have had a mother for more than 50 years that I am too used to having a mother that I can't bear it.
After all, thinking brings about a turnaround. is no longer a day of tearful communication, and the former mother has come back again and again!
When she returned, it didn't seem to be the colorful vase in front of me that placed her bones, nor the smiling images of her. It was one day that I read a common quote in the newspaper: "XXX lives forever in our hearts!" I have long regarded this phrase as a cliché, but at this moment I burst into tears, and I realized its truth and infallibility.
I finally knew where my mother was.
Death has not taken everything away, and the young and healthy mother is still alive in our hearts, in the hearts of people. Breaking out of the grip of death, she smiled and whispered to me, recounting the past one after another......
1. A glimpse of the Anti-Japanese War A lifetime can be described as lucky
There are two kinds of mothers: an old revolutionary and a writer. This forced her to leave her children to be raised by her in-laws in the countryside during the war years. My two younger brothers and I both spent our infancy childhood at my grandparents' house. It wasn't until the spring of 1944 that my mother picked me up and took me to the anti-Japanese base in Jizhong, where she was fighting. As a child, although I have a clear memory of my mother's fighting years, I still don't forget the great thrill she encountered. One winter night, my mother only told me that there was a situation, and without much explanation, she left me at my hometown's house and hurried away alone. I don't remember how long it was, but my mother finally came back and told me, "It's so dangerous!"
It turned out that she crossed the frozen Juma River to escape the sweep of the Japanese. That night, my mother climbed the dark embankment of the Juma River, and when she saw that there was no one around, she rushed down the embankment and stepped on the ice to go to the looming village on the other side. When entering the village, my mother passed by a tiled house at the entrance of the village, and saw two heavy black doors on the street open, and there was no one to see, so she walked straight along the road to the village. The village in the early hours of the morning was cold and silent.
The mother was about to find a "fortress household" to hide, and suddenly met a person who stared at the mother for a moment, seemed to see the identity of the mother, and quietly exclaimed: "God, why did you come here!" He glanced around, there was a stack of firewood not far away, so he pushed and pulled his mother into the stack of firewood and haystack, and then said, "There are Japanese people in the village, you can't move if I don't come!"
His mother was met by a progressive village cadre, and a few hours later, he had the opportunity to take his mother, who was shivering from the cold, to a villager's house. The family had changed the mother's clothes in the clothes of a local woman, and as soon as she had settled down, the enemy drove her to the courtyard and gathered her. My mother was standing in the women's team, and she saw several soldiers in the uniforms of the Eighth Route Army in the courtyard being tied up by Japanese devils......
In this way, she broke through the butcher's knife of the Japanese.
What I will never forget about my mother's adventure is not the above scene, but the conversation between her and the village cadre who rescued her:
"Where are you from?"
"From the north side of the river."
"The Japanese have occupied this village for several days, and there has been a sentry on the embankment!"
“……”
"Have you ever entered a big black gate in the village?"
"It's over."
"That's the devil's headquarters, and there's a sentry at the gate!"
It was such a coincidence that my mother went up to the embankment and entered the village, and she happened to meet the luck of a lifetime for the village cadres.
"Many of my comrades-in-arms sacrificed their ...... during the eight-year war of resistance," my mother said to me more than once, with a look of regret and sadness.
Although the publication of "Song of Youth" had its ups and downs, it came out in 1958, and the timing was right. Before her, most of the novels about intellectuals plus love and revolution had been criticized; Soon after that, a decade of catastrophe followed. After the publication of "Song of Youth", Ms. Tian Zangshen of Beijing Daily had a unique vision and serialized it in the daily newspaper, expanding the influence of her work. Then the film "Song of Youth", directed by Cui Wei and accompanied by domestic first-class photography and excellent actors, was successfully filmed, making "Song of Youth" a household name. After that, the work caused controversy and discussion, and Mr. Mao Dun made a conclusive evaluation. This is an unconcealed opportunity for "Song of Youth".
My mother had a black mole on the upper part of her right eyebrow, and my grandmother was a superstitious old lady who admired multiple gods. She doesn't know what "Song of Youth" is, but she has deep feelings about her daughter-in-law's immortality when she is in the Eight Paths, and she often chatters; "What's on your mother's eyebrows? That's Magpie Dengmei! Your mother is a lucky general!"
Yes, yes, it's always a pleasure to hear.
Second, do not stop the pen and plough the method is simple and simple
People tend to look less carefully at what is close to their eyes, the harder it is to see clearly. I'm an editor, and I'm an amateur and a little bit of writing and ink, which makes me a little unconvinced by the artistic skills of her work. I seem to have said, "That's what 'Song of Youth' is all about...... "Dohachi's works just rely on a little bit of life in Japan to express an established concept."
It was two years ago that my hubris changed. I don't remember which article I wrote about my mother who escaped from Shanghai with a baby in her arms, and when she was bombed in Nanjing, she put me under my stomach and I cried so hard. I pondered it for a while. My mother recounted the scene vividly, but I wrote it vividly, no matter how much I weighed the rhetoric, it was still dry.
Soon I got the prose volume of "Yang Mo's Collected Works" and flipped through it three times and two times to an article, where my mother was writing the same plot that made me difficult—"I was lying alone in the damp, overgrown field with my child in my arms, and at this time, I did not look at the stars or the moon, and I was all focused on my child—as long as she was not killed, I was satisfied." "It's simple and clear, but it makes the image of a mother come to life. Reading and reading, I was fascinated, but my heart was a little unpleasant, a little confused. After thinking about it for a long time, I was convinced.
Yang Mo hugged her little daughter suddenly, and her comrades-in-arms hugged Xu Ran (taken in 1945 in Gu'an, Hebei Province)
Simplicity and heaviness are the mother's literary style; Literary expression can give people a simple and simple rather than gorgeous and light, which is a clever literary skill in itself, which is the truth of "great wisdom and foolishness", right?
I believe that "the text is like the person", although the form of the connection between the text and the person is often extremely complex, there is always a law to follow. Mother is a simple and simple person. She has no higher education, and her success depends on writing and writing, practice makes perfect. At the age of 70, my mother was still writing novels "The Song of Fangfei" and "The Song of Yinghua". At the age of almost 80, he is still sorting, adding and revising "Yang Mo's Anthology" by himself, and he is still being invited to edit and revise the abridged version of "Song of Youth" suitable for children to read for the publishing house, etc. In her later years, her mother, with many limitations in her ability to live and range of activities, was old and stupid, but always maintained a sharp mind in literature.
To my mother's regret, the seven-volume, more than 280,000-word "Yang Mo Anthology" was completed a year before her death. The book is very beautiful, and each cover is a smiling photo of my mother from different generations. It's a pity that many famous novels have been put on the screen over the years, and "Three Songs" has also been talked about by many film and television departments, but my mother has never been able to witness her works on the TV screen.
3. Faith and Persistence There are reasons for the two lawsuits
The seventh volume of Yang Mo's Collected Works contains as an appendix a letter of about 100,000 words written to me by my mother. Because my mother was old and sick, I made a school correction before Fu Zi. To tell you the truth, I was a little apprehensive when I read these letters in the past, and I was a little apprehensive about sorting them out at this time. - Fear of being scolded. Mom was an Orthodox "Bolshevik", I called her "Orthodox Mom" in the article. Including my love life when I was a girl, my mother's intervention was: "Why don't you love such a Lei Feng-style character?"
After all, the Cultural Revolution shook her. She recognized that not everyone can become a good Communist Party member. Words such as "you must progress quickly" and "be a good revolutionary descendant" no longer appear often in her letters. She truly believed in the cause of the communists she was fighting for, and she was not at all a fraud, and there was no personal utilitarianism in her beliefs. I believe.
In the 80s, on my lonely literary journey, some works won several awards and made films. When facing the National Literary Works Awards, a senior in the literary world warned me: "I still have to do something, and it is best for Comrade Yang Mo to say hello." I didn't find anyone, I didn't plead with my mother, I knew she wouldn't help her, not even for herself. The work was defeated, and the day of the defeat was lost.
In 1994, my mother and I co-authored a collection of women's books, "Blue Garden", which was published. The root knot is because of one of my novellas, "The Three Sisters of the Shaohua Yang Family". Eight or nine years ago, I interviewed my mother and listened to her tell her about herself and my maternal grandparents and two aunts. In addition to the notes, there are six recordings.
Naturally, I use my opinions and techniques to write about "sex", because it involves my mother and Poplar, I am really careful and careful. In the autumn of 1993, after I finished the manuscript, I confidently gave it to my mother. Suddenly, one day, my mother came with a letter, a thick envelope, heavy! I don't have the guts to read that letter a second time. It's because I wrote about her first night, about the romantic union of my maternal grandparents.
"You can't write like this, can you write what I tell you?" She said.
I also decided to ignore my mother, published the book, and notified the publishing house. For many days I didn't visit my mother, who was hospitalized at the Navy General Hospital. Or did she relent, and called me to tell me to change it...... The kind and affectionate mom is back. I compromised, but I didn't have the passion to change it, deleting the previous details, and then continuing to do so, leaving dry bones. - Even the name has been changed. The original name was "The Three Sisters of the Young Yang Family", and my mother didn't let me use the word "youth......
It can be imagined how disgusted the orthodox mother is for people to write "Yang Mo's First Love" and "Mei Kai's Second Visit to Yang Mo".
Two entanglements, especially the latter, hurt my mother's vitality.
Mom has always been open-minded and tolerant. She loves to read, never rejects new things, and always looks at the world with a pair of beautiful eyes. Until later in life, when I talked to her, she was very understanding, both abstract and concrete. But for some reason, when it comes to her private life, when others want to get a few strokes, her mother is very vigilant and intolerant.
Of course, she was a revolutionary of pure faith.
Fourth, twists and turns, I didn't expect to go in a hurry
After her mother's death, some newspapers carried commemorative articles about the cause of her death. Although my mother is in her old age, I don't know the cause of her death, so I said that I have the unknown pain of my mother's death. In August 1995, she was diagnosed with fluid in her chest, in which cancer cells were found. The mother has no symptoms and is still ruddy, healthy and energetic. At that time, a friend who was a doctor told me: "The metabolism of the elderly is slow, and the development of cancer cells is also slow, and the cancer cells in her body may have been there for a long time, and there will always be a period of life-threatening immunity, and it will be more hopeful to strengthen the immunity more......
I have always believed that this analysis makes sense.
When choosing a hospital for radiotherapy, my mother had a soft spot for this hospital because she learned that Mr. Ye Junjian had been cured of cancer at Peking University Hospital. I excitedly said, "Mom, I trust my instincts, it's good here!" In the city center, we look at your convenience. At that time, my mother looked at me with a smile in her blinking eyes, how could she not trust her daughter's instincts?
The Chinese are good at etiquette, and they know who has an incurable disease, and no matter how busy they are, they will meet each other. Peking University Hospital is in the center of Beijing, and it is convenient for me to visit my mother, as well as for others. In this way, while my mother was undergoing radiation therapy, she had to constantly meet with relatives and friends who came to visit, and you came and went in the ward, sometimes five or six people crowded into the hut to visit my mother, including my family.
In late autumn and early winter, flu is extremely rampant in big cities......
My mother has always confidently cooperated with the hospital for treatment, and the subsequent twists and turns are not what she expected, nor are we expected.
Excluding the hours that continued with the use of life-sustaining machinery, the actual time of my mother's death was 11:35 a.m. on Sunday, December 10, 1995. That morning, my mother made several gestures with her eyes and squirmed her mouth to express a certain request. I guessed a few times and asked her out loud, but she eagerly shook her head and said no, and hurried away with regret.
Therefore, I have a long period of remorse and self-blame.
Before she died, she was very uncomfortable? Let me call a doctor?
Is it for me to call her affectionate companion in her old age, our Uncle Lee?
Is it for me to take pen and paper? She can't say it, but she can write it!
Mom, I'm sorry!
After my mother left, I saw her in a dream. On the morning of December 21, my mother and I went to see the exhibition and arrived at a hall, where she said, "My shoes don't fit, my feet are uncomfortable, you can go home and find me a suitable pair." I walked through the buildings in the city, but I couldn't find my mother's house, and I went to the department store, which was in a chaotic state of closure, and there were no shoes to buy. At 10 a.m. on the day I woke up, my younger brother, who was in charge of the funeral at my mother's apartment, called and said, "Mom's feet are swollen, you can buy her another pair of shoes in a larger size......
It's still noon on this day, take a nap, and think in a trance, tomorrow afternoon's activities, ask my mother to go with me. Immediately sad - tomorrow afternoon is my mother's farewell ceremony......
My mother's phone calls to me always start with the same style: "Xu Ran, I'm my mother!" No matter how familiar I was with her tone, my mother always told herself: I am a mother.
Listen! The phone is ringing, and I'm looking forward to it......
Lifelike mothers are everywhere, can death dig her up who lives in people's hearts?
10 February 1996
Xu Ran, whose real name is Ma Xu Ran, was born in Beijing in 1936. He has worked in the Art Troupe of the North China Military Region and the Inner Mongolia Song and Dance Troupe; He studied at Heilongjiang University and later taught in Duyun, Guizhou. In the 80s of the 20th century, he worked in the Beijing Federation of Literary and Art Circles, successively serving as editor and deputy editor. In 1984, he joined the Beijing Writers Association. His main works include short stories, reportage, essays "Blue Garden", "Love is Gentle, Love is Cold", "Deep Snow" and so on. The work "The Son Left by the Red Army" won the first prize of Beijing Essay Reportage to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the "Beijing Literature" magazine award, and was filmed as a film of the same name, "The Point and Line in the Circle" and "Love Soul" won the "Essay" magazine excellence award respectively, "Mom, Daughter Wants to Say to You" won the 3rd All-China Women's Federation Good Work Award, "Victory over Wusha" won the 11th Asian Games Outstanding Work Award, and "Three Female Prisoners Sentenced to Death with Suspended Sentences" won the National Style Literature Award.
Source: Sanjia Village
Author: Xu Ran
Photo courtesy of Ma Bo