When I told my mother that I was going to see my uncle, I was both surprised and happy. "Your uncle must have been so excited that his nephew from Shenzhen came to see him, and he didn't know how excited he was; be careful he had high blood pressure."
My uncle was actually my uncle, who had died thirty-six years ago after he died of advanced schistosomiasis. The so-called "mother and uncle" are naturally the people most often mentioned by mothers and aunts.
"When my uncle was young, he was a handsome young student, who could write and calculate, and was the object of organizational training." More than a decade ago, my mother said this to me
That cloudy-eyed, atrophied, prematurely aging man is my once handsome uncle? I've never thought about that. I remember when I went to college, my uncle came to send me, and my highly myopic eyes did not even wear the bottom of the bottle. The ears have also become deaf. He put his face in front of my eyes and said with emotion, "You will have a bright future," and I was so moved that I wanted to cry. At that time, my uncle was less than fifty years old, and the only child re-studied several times in high school, unwilling to work as a farmer, but he could not always read out, and his uncle had to be in a hurry.
My mother told my uncle's story:
In 1956, his uncle was in his twenties, an accountant for the town government of Huaishi, polite and polite, and there were many girls who liked him. Because from the perspective of that time, he was a big red man, the youngest person who had the honor to participate in the revolutionary work. Her uncle chose her mother's classmate, a girl who was very enthusiastic about social work at the time. However, before it was too late to get married, the town built a reservoir, and the government called for immigrants; the girl enthusiastically signed up and moved to a new farm in Dongting Lake, hundreds of miles away. This farm was built around the lake in Huarong Territory, and it was given a very rich name, called "Qianliang Lake". It is actually a wasteland to be reclaimed. My mother was also among the immigrants, and it was there that she met my father and gave birth to me. Her uncle was a female cadre on the farm at the time, while his uncle was still working in the small town of Huaishi.
In the era of the Great Leap Forward in five or eight years, his uncle could not withstand the call of love, and finally gave up his work in the town and went to the farm, and this choice was destined to change his life. Because he had migrated by himself, his uncle could not choose a better job, and he went to one of the following branches to become an accountant. But soon, love left him, and he married a teacher who had returned from college and was not popular at the time, and even a little smelly (belonging to the right). The uncle soon met and married his uncle. Others are somewhat indignant, but the uncle has no resentment or hatred, and his heart is like water. He lamented the mistake of fate, but forgot about it because of a word of "love".
For more than thirty years, the world has changed, the wind and frost have been bitter and rainy, the honest uncle has lost the treatment of state cadres, and with the rural reform contracted to the household, his position as accountant has also been lost, there is land to cultivate outside, the family has an only son to be pampered, and the heavy burden of the family makes the uncle soon grow old. The back began to bend, the ears were deaf, the eyes were unclear, and the hardships of life were written little by little on the appearance.
My uncle's first love left the farm with her husband in the late seventies and moved to work in a university union that happened to be the one I attended. Her husband is a professor and teaches philosophy. My uncle was a little excited to know that I was going to study at that university, and he said that an acquaintance was working at that university and asked me if I could go to see her, maybe it would help me. Of course I agreed, but I didn't tell my uncle who I knew she was, in fact, I wanted to see my uncle blush, but I couldn't bear it.
I found her in the university's teacher's village, she has two lovely daughters, but has separated because of her bad relationship with her husband. Even so, the superior life was written in her expression. But perhaps it is precisely the superior environment that creates the graveyard of marriage,
"Is your uncle okay?"
In the face of her greeting, I did not tell her uncle's true situation, and I knew that my uncle did not need her sympathy, just as she did not need her uncle's feelings.
After I joined the work, I used to want to buy a hearing aid or a pair of glasses and give it to my uncle when I came home, but my mother said, you might as well give him money, he can buy whatever he wants. My uncle's son joined the work in 1986, in another county prosecutor's office far from home, a place of awe. The firecrackers of my uncle's house were set off for a few days. However, after marrying a daughter-in-law and adding grandchildren, the burden of life has not been alleviated at all. More than ten years have passed, the uncle and uncle have long moved to the county where his son works, I heard that my cousin has recently been promoted to section chief, and my uncle should be bitter.
"You should go and see your uncle, or you won't see it."
There is a reason in my mother's words, it turns out that my uncle has undergone several surgeries due to illness in the past two years, and it can be said that he has returned from the brink of death several times. Ear diseases, eye diseases, high blood pressure, gallstones; all kinds of diseases befell his uncle and tortured him to death. Most recently, because of a disease called "decay", he was admitted to the hospital, and the doctor refused to operate because he had high blood pressure, so that his son made a guarantee that the hospital would not be responsible for any consequences. Fortunately, once again, the dead came back to life. However, he spent thousands of pieces on his son, which made his cousin, who was not rich, feel very difficult.
Because of the delay, when I arrived at the city where my uncle now lived, it was more than six o'clock in the evening, the wind was blowing, the chill was getting stronger, I called a tricycle with a very shaky engine, which is commonly known as "slow swimming", and asked him to take me to the gate of the procuratorate, I lifted the curtain, and found that the newly built gate of the procuratorate was very majestic and magnificent. There is a small shop, or a small stall, next to the gate, because there are only some fruits and small foods in the small space. The shopkeepers were an old man, and I thought I should buy something for my cousin's child, so I walked over. I was about to choose the fruit, but the old lady stared at me until I looked up and heard her say to the old man, "Hey, isn't this just a child?" The startled old man reacted very slowly and put his face in front of me, and then he grabbed my hand. This look jumped from my memory, and I was stunned to understand.
He and she were my uncle and uncle that I could no longer recognize. The knife of time had mercilessly changed their faces beyond the old age I had imagined. In order to help their son, they borrowed the communication room that had not yet been delivered to do business, from seven o'clock in the morning to ten o'clock in the evening, guarding the cold wind and the bitter rain, in order to earn a few dollars, it was probably not enough for the uncle's medicinal expenses.
I thought that this night my uncle would talk to me about the topic of long-term farewell, who knew that my uncle had completely lost his hearing. He hugged me and was still so excited, saying in a muffled voice his praise for me and his feelings about the current current affairs and politics.
That was something that a former state cadre had in mind all his life.