Chapter 10: Death Day, Life and Death
Regarding my gaffe on Chinese New Year's Eve, we tacitly kept silent, and when we met again, it was still the way it should have been, and it didn't make me feel uncomfortable.
The days when you have someone by your side always pass very quickly, and the winter that I haven't liked very much has passed in the blink of an eye. Before I knew it, it was the sixth day of the third month in the blink of an eye, and since my mother moved to the nursing home, every year on this day, I went to the nursing home to see my mother in the morning, and then went to pay tribute to my father in the afternoon.
In the tenth year, in the past ten years, batches of bungalows in Jiangcheng have become factories, and batches of vacant land have been built buildings, the blue sky overhead has gradually been covered by haze, and the birds beating on the trees have gradually disappeared. Everything is changing, but the memory is not blurred.
I still remember everything I had 10 years ago. When you close your eyes, you will be flooded in. It is said that time is a good thing, it will make you forget some things that you don't want to remember, but here for me, time is like a knife, engrave every moment that you don't want to recall in my heart, and accumulate over time, becoming more and more profound.
When I arrived at the nursing home, my mother was watching TV, and when she saw me coming, she just looked up and then returned to the TV.
The screen should be a program for the adjustment of husband and wife's feelings, and it was about how to persuade a cheating husband to change his mind. It's really a clichΓ© but not low ratings, in this materialistic era, loyalty between people is rapidly eroding.
When I went in, I was playing the man's wife crying with pear blossoms and rain, holding her daughter's hand in her hand, humbly counting the sweetness of the two before her husband's cheating, hoping to make the man change his mind, the thin and cowardly daughter kept wiping her mother's tears with her big ignorant eyes, and looked back at her father from time to time as if asking for help. But the man remained unmoved, and did not want to look up at them, no matter how much the woman pleaded.
After the woman didn't get a response, gradually, it turned from a low cry to hysterical abuse, and the host tried to interrupt several times without success. The husband's eyes were full of disgust and wanted to leave the scene angrily, and he was persuaded by the mediator to sit down again, but he didn't say a word from beginning to end.
I stood in front of the window, and felt that it was a very unfortunate moment for me to come, and that this embarrassing scene could find a shadow in me and my mother. Dry standing there, neither advancing nor retreating. I felt that I should say something, hoping to get my mother away from the plot on TV, but I hesitated for a long time, but I couldn't find any topic, so I could only say: "Mom, I'm here." β
The mother's eyes did not take off the TV, and she only said lightly after a long time: "Well, sit down." β
I was struggling with how to open the conversation out of this awkward atmosphere, and commercials began to appear on TV. I breathed a sigh of relief and hurriedly said, "Today is Dad's 10th death day, Mom, are you still not going to go?"
The mother never even took her eyes off the screen, but the hand holding the remote control tightened, and the green tendons began to be exposed on the dry palm, but she didn't mean to speak.
I didn't know how to continue, so I sat for a long time, and I could only say stupidly: "Then I'll go first, you take care of yourself, and call me if you have something." β
The mother suddenly said, "In the future, don't ask me this question again, the answer will not change." β
Until I left the door, my mother didn't say a word. But a moment before the door closed, I seemed to hear a sigh, infinitely sad.
Seeing that the weather was cloudy, it was like ink splashing over, and the steaming moisture in the air couldn't help but gush out of his eyes. I looked up and forced the tide back, thinking that it should be a heavy rain soon, but fortunately I borrowed a car from Sister Wei today. After leaving the sanatorium, I went straight to the cemetery.
The sanatorium is on the east side of Jiangcheng, but the cemetery is the westernmost side, and the road up the mountain is not very easy to walk after being washed by the rain, the fog brought by the rain covers the whole mountain, and the road ahead can not be seen clearly in a daze, and it took more than two hours to hurry up and hurry.
The cold wind mixed with the rain whipped on my body, the rain of broken lines washed over the tombstone in front of me, and the small photo in the middle was not real under the water curtain, and I couldn't see my father's face clearly.
He placed an umbrella on top of the tombstone to stop the pouring water. I took out the handkerchief and tried to dry the tombstone, but it was just useless, and every time I wiped it, another wave of rain washed down, and in an instant, the handkerchief was already soaked.
He stopped what he was doing, knelt in front of the tombstone and wanted to talk to his father, but he wanted to say so much that he didn't know where to start for a while.
It's been ten years, my life has been going on, but his life has stayed at that moment, ten years of life have not overlapped, and I really can't find a topic to say. I don't know if he will be a little sad over there if his wife hasn't come over on the death day of the past ten years. Or maybe he didn't care if he would come at the moment, because his love was always the woman and her children. Perhaps, under the nine springs, he finally found peace, and lived happily with that woman, saying goodbye to life and death, and only seeing each other when he died. Perhaps, they are snuggling up to each other for warmth at the moment, and they don't want to be disturbed, and his mother's absence is what he expects.
As for me, I am sure that my father loves me, but is there more guilt in this love? Was there a moment when he thought about trying to fall in love with my mother for my sake?
These problems have tormented me for ten years, and even more so for my mother for ten years, and maybe I should hate him from my mother's point of view. But people always succumb to the warmth of reality, thinking about the warmth he gave me in this family, I can't even bear to have a grudge against him.
Ever since her mother had an argument with her and she had fallen down the stairs and her legs could not move, the family had always been shrouded in her mother's anger and hysterical screams, and the happiness that she had worked so hard to maintain had become a dam that could burst at any moment.
Even, I had to be careful of the cups and cups that flew in my mother's hand from time to time, but my father never talked back to my mother because of guilt, always advised me to be tolerant of my mother, and then pulled me aside and comforted me softly. At that time, I didn't know the love and hatred between them, but I just blindly felt that my mother's sudden disability caused a great change in temperament. It wasn't until later that the clues were heard from the sound of their violent quarrels. It turned out that he never loved his wife. It turned out that my mother and I were actually a stumbling block to his happiness.
I had a grudge against him, he betrayed me and my mother, but he was the only place in this home that gave me warmth and support. As for later, when my father was in a car accident, I was sad and faintly glad for my father, because he could finally be freed and be with the person she loved the most. And my mother will continue to suffer for the rest of my life in his betrayal, and I will spend the remaining decades in the thoughts of him and the hysteria of my mother.
I immersed myself in my memories for a long time, and when I came back to my senses, I found that the rain was getting heavier and heavier, although I was standing under the umbrella, my body was already soaked, and the cold rain stuck to my skin with my clothes, and the biting cold began to erode my willpower inch by inch. And the water was getting bigger and bigger, and it was no longer up to my ankles, so I put away my thoughts and planned to drive away quickly.
At first, the rain flowed down the windshield in an orderly manner, and then it became like water splashing up, and the wipers did not do anything. Although I got my driver's license for a few years, I didn't have a lot of experience and I wasn't very proficient in driving skills.
The rain is getting stronger, and the radio is constantly reminding people to drive carefully. I became more and more nervous, but I didn't dare to linger for the slightest. The previous week's rain soaking and today's heavy rain are likely to cause landslides or boulders to fall, and anyone who is not careful will be killed in this rainstorm.
The coolness seeped into the body from the soaked clothes, snaking up like silk threads until it caught the nerves in the brain, and then the fear came over for a while, and the hands holding the steering wheel began to tremble.
The trees that stretched out in the mountains whipped the rocks in the wind, and let out a roar of rage. From time to time, there are small birds that are shot down by the torrential rain and strong winds, and they fall in the direction. It was as if death was right behind me, shouting at me, roaring, laughing, as if at any moment he could reach out and strangle me, so that I could not breathe. If you don't pay attention, you'll be dragged into the eternal darkness.
In the blurry image in front of me, I could vaguely see a large branch of a tree struggling in the wind for a few moments, then completely breaking and falling in front of me. I applied the brakes hard and stopped before the branches hit the front window. The branches of the trees in front of him were lying between the road and the front of the car, and the messy branches blocked the view ahead.
I couldn't tell whether it was rain or cold sweat between my foreheads, and I thought about it in my heart: this bowl is thick, close to two meters long, even if I get out of the car, I will definitely not be able to move, and now the water is no longer above my knees, I may also be tripped and washed away if I am not careful, but if I stop here, the branch that falls down in the next second may not be so lucky to dodge. Thinking about the landslides and mudslides that have occurred in recent years, my heart trembles.
After stopping for a moment, I really couldn't think of any other way, and there was not a single car passing by, so it was impossible to call a helper. If you want to get out of here as soon as possible, you can only grit your teeth, make a bet with yourself, and rush over with your foot on the accelerator. The power of the car may be able to push the branches diagonally to the side and open an opening to get out.
I started the car with my eyes closed, slowly exerted force, and pushed the branches forward, things were developing in a good direction, and gradually when the body was about to pass through the gaps in the branches, the body suddenly leaned forward and slid down, and suddenly stopped burning.
The soles of the feet fell into a cold place again, and a steady stream of rain or stagnant water began to pour in under the car door, scorched yellow, and it went all the way up the soles of the feet, and soon it was not past the knees.
This luck is also invincible, it is easy to avoid this branch, and fall into the gap that is washed out by the road, this gap will not let the whole car sink for the time being, but with the washing of the water, the gap becomes larger, and the car is inevitably washed away.
Forcing yourself to calm down, you can't get out if you go forward, you can only try to climb out through the back door, abandon the car and maybe have a chance to survive, stay in the car and wait to fall off the cliff.
I struggled to climb into the back seat, but the doors on both sides could not be opened at all, and I shook the door handle weakly, but the doors did not move. The only way to get out now is through the window, and I have to get out before the gap widens.
Soaked in the rain and fear, I already began to tremble, tears kept pouring out of my eyes, I groped around in the car and didn't find any hard objects to break the glass, I felt out the phone and smashed it I don't know how many times, and the glass still didn't even have a gap.
The body began to freeze, and the hand holding the phone gradually lost its instincts. But the water level was still rising, so I could only keep my chest on the water, try to steady my breathing, bend my fingers hard, and smash my phone against the glass in the back seat with both hands, still not moving, and the sound of the rain crashing on the roof of the car made despair rush over.
When the water level reached my neck, I gave up struggling. Maybe this is the providence of God, ten years later, let me die here.
I wanted to make one last call to my mother, and although she hated me for the face I looked like my father, she was the only person in my world, and if I died, she would be the only one who would remember me. I am the only relative in her world, and after I die, what will she do for the rest of her life?
After all, the will of heaven is still not towards me, the phone is raised above my head but the screen has been black, I can't turn on the phone, the successive impacts just now and the soaking of stagnant water have completely lost its function. If I had known this, I should have called first and then smashed the glass, in that case, at the very least, I would have had a chance to leave a last word.
Resigned to his fate, he put down his mobile phone, leaned his head on the seat and straightened his clothes, if I die here, maybe tomorrow the company will find out that I am absent from work without authorization, and then find that I am dead in the mountains, it seems that there is nothing wrong with dying like this, Su Ye will send money to the nursing home for me, and my mother should be worry-free behind.
What came up in front of me was Quan Yu's face, the corners of his mouth raised, with a hint of teasing Quan Yu, Quan Yu, who was holding a spatula in his hand and pointing out the country in my house, drunk and mistook me for Quan Yu of someone else. There are still clothes hanging on the balcony at home, how can he go in and collect them without a key.
When I lost consciousness, I heard a roar, it was the voice of death. Suddenly, it seemed that a pair of big hands were approaching me, grabbing me, and then dragging me up, and then it seemed to be slapping my face constantly, and the voice sounded a little anxious and a little trembling. "Zhen Rou, wake up, Zhen Rou, you hold on, it's okay right away. I tried to open my eyes to see the owner of the hand, but it was completely dark.
When I woke up again, my eyes felt a little painful, and I couldn't help but want to block it with my hands. I couldn't lift my arms when I moved them, and then I saw that my hands were caught in another pair of big hands, the source of which was a round head with a hairstyle that I had just laughed at a few days ago.
His head seemed to be awakened by my movements, and he raised his head suddenly, and his voice trembled a little when he saw me: "Zhen Rou, you are awake!
I may be a little dazzled, Kwon Yu's eyes seem to be a little red and swollen. I wanted to make a sound, but my throat hurt so much that I could only shake my head.
Quan Yu called the doctor, and after hearing the doctor say that I was fine, he sat back in front of the bed and said, "Zhen Rou, I almost lost you again." β
I was still very sleepy, with someone around, and my mind was extremely relaxed, and I soon fell asleep again, and I wasn't sure if I really heard the last sentence, or if it was a hallucination. The word "again" is not reasonable, we are just eating together, we have not gained anything from each other, nor have we lost anything from each other, and I don't know where to start with the word "again".