#爱是个动词 #
Father-in-law
Text/Xu Zhishun
My father-in-law died the day after my mother-in-law's birthday, the day before Father's Day. According to the condition, he can't delay this day, maybe he wants to spend the last birthday with my mother-in-law, so that everyone in the family can have a good mood, pray to heaven, and postpone his return date. For a kind person, for a person who does not ask for people easily, and finally asks God for one thing, I think God will satisfy him.
As for Father's Day, he didn't care, he never cared about himself all his life. Eat, it doesn't matter; wear, it doesn't matter; live, it doesn't matter; body, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, he lives for someone else.
He had his own name, but it wasn't used much and was often replaced. When he was young, he was called the son of so-and-so, and after having children, people called him so-and-so, and after the daughters got married, they had another title - so-and-so, he had grandchildren, and he was often called so-and-so and his grandfather.
Someone else's name is always in line, ahead of him. Even if it is difficult to get sick and hospitalized (he is rarely sick, small diseases are too lazy to be hospitalized, anti-one resistance has passed) others can not replace, but the doctor is convenient, with a few beds and a few numbers instead, the name is still not used. It was unfair, but he never seemed to think about it, as long as he felt that it was calling himself, even if he agreed to it. In that case, don't say his name.
My father-in-law was frugal all his life and never spent money on himself. Eat not picky, against buying chicken, fish, meat. Basically do not eat fish, because there are thorns, and do not eat seafood, because they are not used to fishy taste. Dress never carefully, as long as you can block the wind and cold. If you buy him more expensive clothes, he looks unhappy, angrily throws the clothes on the bed, and says, "What are you doing with this dress?" Hoop arm leggings, wearing is really uncomfortable! "But when there are many people, he will also wear them out and make people judge."
He was kind and never quarreled with people. It is also common for the countryside to scold and fight for chicken and garlic, but he does not worry about people and make contradictions. He is not afraid of loss, he would rather owe himself, never take advantage of others, others take advantage of him, he is too lazy to say, pretend not to know. He often said two sentences: "Rice on the side of the bowl, there is not enough to eat." "Fight for qi, fight for qi, fight for qi, fight for more and more qi." In him, all the virtues of the peasants can be found, and it is difficult to find the shameful faults of those people.
He always thinks about others, preferring to wronged himself and asking for nothing from others. Every time we came home, we had to ask him what he needed, and it was convenient to buy something in town. He always said, there is no shortage of anything, just come back and turn around. Sometimes give him some pocket money, he always says, I am not short of money, I don't need it, you have a lot of money. We know that he never had a lot of money in his life. He always tried to be as considerate of others as possible, even in his last days, we went to take care of him, he said, you all have to go to work, don't delay things, I am sick, come back when you are not busy, just come back, don't come back when you are busy. We can clearly see that he has tears in his eyes when he says this, he knows that his days are running out, his life is beginning to count down, who does not want his children to be with him...
He was always afraid to cause trouble for others and tried not to disturb others. He knows that we often work overtime at night and squeeze in time for naps at noon to make sure we have more energy at night. He went to my house, and if he happened to go to bed in the morning, he wouldn't knock on the door and waited downstairs until we got up. If we go to the countryside for vacation, we inevitably want to make up for the bad sleep that we usually don't sleep well, he never calls us to get up, he creeps when he gets up, the chicken does not put out, afraid that the rooster will crow and make us sleep badly. He sneaked into the field with his farm tools on his back, afraid that you would grab work with him and pry his business. If we are hindered by the pressure of public opinion and have to go to the field to show off the fine style of "eating, living and working together", he basically rushes to finish the urgent, difficult, dangerous, heavy, and dirty work, and we only go to the symbolic work of collecting stalls and sweeping up the tail.
He didn't look up to us for heavy work, such as carrying a lot of dung, couldn't hold the burden on the bucket, spilled the manure all the way, set out in a full bucket, only half a bucket in the field, wasted the dung, and also pasted the crops on the leaves, on the grass, on his legs everywhere dirty, the maggots were shaken in circles, the waves went outside the barrel, fell to the ground, couldn't distinguish between the southeast and northwest, dragged a long tail all over the ground.
Precisely because of our lack of technology, we are often deprived of the right to pick up excrement, and although we have protested verbally, even sitting under a tree to demonstrate, he just laughs and does not respond. Later, the busy holidays of summer and autumn were cancelled, and we were even exempt from the formalism of putting on a show and posing, and after a long time, we did not feel guilty, but felt at ease.
My father-in-law had no hobbies. Playing cards, bored; drinking, not a lot of alcohol; fishing, no idle work; chatting, gossiping, he has no interest, and there are no friends who are interested in that aspect. He was a silent man with very few words. Whatever we talk about, he is only a faithful listener, and the words of his heart are spoken only to his crops. He is our audience, and the crops are his listeners. Sometimes he worked alone in the field, still humming and singing in his mouth, his voice was very low, there was no sense of rhythm, no one knew what he was singing, and as soon as he found someone approaching, he immediately stopped. Maybe he wasn't confident enough in his song, maybe he didn't want to disturb the tranquility of others, maybe the song belonged to him and the crops. His songs are sung only to himself, only to his crops.
He was industrious all his life and was not afraid of hardship. He believes that laziness is shameful, that it is shameful to have a pair of hands, not to work, to rely on others, to rely on the state. Reaching out to the country for this and that, and never being satisfied, that is to corrupt the family style and shame people's eyes. He loves labor, loves the crops in the field, loves the land under his feet. It's in the ground all year round. He said: Man is a, and the more he plays, the sicker he gets. Occasionally, he had a cold or a cold, did not take medicine, did not give injections, as long as he went to the field to work, sweated, and got sick. We said, if they were all like you, the doctor would be angry.
No matter how sad, how bitter, how tired he was, as long as he faced the golden wheat field, the pumpkin in the field, the old corn cob more than a foot long, this masterpiece of his own, he was very satisfied, he was like a triumphant return of the king, the poet as comfortable.
He had crawled all his life on the dirt, but he didn't seem to have climbed enough. A few days before his death, when his illness was already very serious, he stayed in the hospital for a while, and when he was discharged from the hospital, he met someone selling spicy seedlings and eggplant seedlings on the side of the street, and he immediately bought more than a dozen seedlings each.
When he got home, he was going to plant it in the field. Everyone stood in the way. One is that he is afraid that he will not be able to walk steadily and cannot withstand wrestling; the other is that he is afraid of the jokes of the neighbors, an old man who is sick like this, and let him do farm work in the field. I saw that he was in tears, the tone of his speech changed, full of confusion, fear, and even anger at the deprivation of his right to labor, he had not been to the field for a long time, he thought too much about his crops, too much about his land...
I hurriedly said: Let the big go to plant it, this year's rain is good, then the eggplant is big, spicy, let's take a few more plates.
Spicy seeds and eggplants were planted, but he didn't see them blossom, didn't see them bear fruit...
The father-in-law loved his relatives, and although he never said a word of "love" on his lips, he carved love into a pair of hands and dissolved it in his hot heart. He did his best not to drag others down in his life, to take care of others as much as he could, he knew that he could not leave much valuable things for his relatives, he could only pour his love into the details and bits of life.
When my wife and sisters were in the county high school, the traffic was very inconvenient, and when it rained, the road collapsed and the car did not pass. In order to bring food to the two of them, he heard that someone in the village drove a tractor into the city, so he took an acquaintance's tractor to deliver the grain, and there were still more than twenty miles from the city, and the tractor could not leave, so he carried more than a hundred pounds of grain and walked to the school. When he got to the city, he turned into a clay man, which was seen by people, funny, and painful. Stayed overnight at a relative's place in the evening and the next morning took two steamed buns and walked home. Don't say that it is not open to traffic, it is open to traffic, and he may not be willing to pay a fifty cent to buy a ticket. At that time, the ten thousand yuan household was a monopoly. After walking for a day, Quan Dang earns money, the more money is spent, the less he spends, but his legs and feet do not fold, and it is more cost-effective. Along the way, hungry to chew two mouthfuls of steamed buns, thirsty, lie down in the ditch to drink a few sips of cold water. One hundred and fifty miles, more than 20 hours of walking, by the time I got home it was past midnight, and the whole village was quietly asleep.
My father-in-law never spent money indiscriminately, and was reluctant to buy fruit and snacks. The first time we bought fruit, it was when we took the kids home, and he bought a few peaches for his little grandson for the first time. He distributed the peaches to everyone, and everyone said that they had stained the light of the child, and the surprise was no less than receiving the gift of the emperor. But he didn't eat it, for the simple reason: he couldn't bite. It is a fact that he was in his fifties, his teeth were basically lost, his hair was basically stripped, his back was hunched, he was one meter seven in height when he was young, less than one meter six vertical height at fifty years old, and eighty years old when he died, probably less than one meter five. This is the mark left by the years on him, and hardship is a devil, always pushing an overwhelmed person down fiercely.
My father-in-law has been giving silently, consciously, painlessly. The year before, he was hospitalized, and as soon as he examined the doctor, he said that he was in advanced stages of esophageal cancer. Because of his age, weak body and poor disease resistance, the doctor said that it was not appropriate to do surgery. In order not to increase his psychological burden, we told him that it was a general disease, not serious, and that it would be better after a period of treatment. After being hospitalized for a period of time, he felt that his physical fitness had recovered, so he was determined to be discharged from the hospital, he was afraid of spending more money, and he was even more relieved that his mother-in-law could not be relieved.
My mother-in-law had a fall a few years ago, paralyzed her lower limbs, and usually relied on her father-in-law to wait at home. So my father-in-law couldn't stay in the hospital and urged me to go back all day. When he returned, he began to take care of my mother-in-law again, pushing the wheelchair around the village, the back arched even more, and only the bulging back could be seen in the distance, and the head face could not be seen. This is a serious patient who is dying in the care of another patient, they are almost inseparable, until finally the father-in-law himself can not walk, he slowly also knows that he has a "wronged disease", he still reluctantly pushes, this is his last right, he does not want to give up...
Completely throwing off the armrest of the wheelchair, it was after he fell, his legs could not support his body, although his body had been thinned to the bone, there was not much weight, the wind could blow down. His lips trembled and he said intermittently: Later... Who's a... come...... Push you...
He helplessly threw away his hand...
I know that it is very difficult to write an article for a man like my father-in-law, who has no fame, who knows him now very few, and even fewer who will know him in the future, who will walk through his cemetery and will not know that he is the owner of this land, unless he silently recites in front of his tombstone the children and grandchildren of his benefits. He was so ordinary, like an inconspicuous crop in the field, like a grain of sand on a riverbank, like a grass on the side of the road, like an ant crawling hard with something extremely out of proportion to his body...
Our ant clan, our parents...
EDIT: Laid-back
The image comes from the Internet
About the Author
Xu Zhishun, pen name Xu Zhou, is a member of the Shaanxi Writers Association, a director of the Shangluo Poetry Association, and a director of the Shangluo Writing Society. He was awarded the title of "Outstanding Member of Virtue and Art Shuangxin" by Shangluo Writers Association, "Outstanding Literary and Art Talent Volunteer" by Shangluo Literary association, and "Chinese Poetry And Art Shuangxin Author" by Chinese Poetry Research Association, Chinese Poetry Association, Chinese Poetry Academic Research Institute, and International Chinese Poetry Federation.