93. Father's relics
On the morning of August 23, 1993, my father, who had been in a coma for 8 days, finally swallowed his last breath and died at Nandu Health Center. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ļ½ļ½ļ½Uļ½Eć InfoThe doctor at Nandu Health Center said my father could save his life. This is not the case, and it makes me haunted. My brother and brother and I walked for five hours and escorted him home.
I've wanted to write a little text to commemorate my father for a long time, but I haven't done it, or I have done it, but I haven't written anything, so I have to sigh in my heart and put it down. It's just a coincidence today, this script, which has been written for nearly a month, was written in the early hours of this morning, and a funeral scene was written, and I couldn't help but think of my father who had been dead for many years.
It's hard to remember my father, let alone write about him. I read an article written by Mr. Bai Yang before, in which he divided the relationship between children and their parents into four stages, one is from birth to thirteen or fourteen years old. The child thinks that in the whole world, only the father and mother are great, and this is the golden age of the father and mother. The second is from thirteen or fourteen to twenty-three or four. As the children grew older, they began to rebel and disrespect, believing that their parents were the world's first-class old stubborn, and this was the age of pig iron for fathers and mothers. The third is from the age of twenty-five or six to thirty-five or sixteen, during which the children are the busiest, falling in love, getting married, and giving birth to the next generation, which is the Bronze Age of fathers and mothers. Fourth, after about thirty-five or sixteen years old, most of the old fathers and mothers died with hatred, and at this time they involuntarily found out in their conscience, recalling the various masterpieces of the year, remorse, and sorrow, and suddenly felt that "the tree wants to be quiet and the wind is endless, and the son wants to raise but the relatives are not there", tears are vertical and horizontal, beating the chest and hitting the iron. At this time, it is the diamond age of my father and mother. It's a pity that in this era, I can only earn manuscript fees when I can write nostalgic articles with tears.
Now I am in the fourth stage, of course, now I suddenly remembered to write something about my father, not to earn manuscript fees, nor to find a conscience, just sitting in the cool night, some details about him are slowly floating in my mind, my eyes are a little moist, let myself involuntarily, pull and pull to write some incoherent words.
In my memory, after my father's death, I never seemed to shed a tear except in my dreams. Only that time was when my father was at his funeral. When the sound of firecrackers came and went on the road ahead, the sound of mourning music led the way, and my father's coffin was lifted by four men and walked slowly, I suddenly realized that the father who gave birth to me and raised me was really leaving this world and leaving himself. So, without warning, tears welled up in my eyes, blurring my vision and ticking against the dust on the ground.
Now more than ten years have passed in a flash, and the impression of my father has gradually faded (a few days ago, my daughter asked if there was a photo of her grandfather, and I was ashamed to tell her that we didn't even leave a photo of him). However, even today, there are three things related to him (let's call them things) that are becoming more and more clear in my memory and cannot be forgotten.
The most distant memories are my father's smoky yellowed middle and index fingers, and the strong smell of tobacco. When I was a child, my father used his big tobacco-smelling hand to bathe me, I still remember vividly, I stood in the warm water of the wooden plate, my father used his yellowed fingers, picked out the boogers of my nose, and the smell of tobacco will remain in my brain forever, I can never forget. My father would always stroke our hair with his big hands, and I could feel the caress and force even now. For decades, my father has relied on this hand, this hand, to support his six children and let his three sons finish college.
My father's satchel was the thing I was most fascinated by in my childhood. My father was the custodian of the credit union at the time, and every polder, he would carry his satchel to the commune office to withdraw money for the members. It was about a three-hour walk from my house to the commune, which seemed to us children to be very far away. However, we, who had never seen the world before, wanted to go outside to see it, so we thought that our father wanted to go with him. My father wanted to work and basically refused our request. However, every time he came back, he would bring us something, sugar cane, corn, fruit. In the end, I was no longer satisfied with what I ate, and was clamoring to be a follower. So, my father made a deal with me, as long as I didn't make trouble with him to go to the polder, every time he helped me buy a villain book, I clearly remember that the first time he took out of my bag was a copy of "Fishing Island Angry Tide", and the second was "Flying Eagle Cliff", so to speak, my literary enlightenment began at that time. Now that I think about it, in the past four or five years, my father had to help me buy 4-5 villain books every month on average, which cost more than 1 yuan, and his salary was 10 yuan a month. Think about yourself, if my salary is 1,000 yuan a month, will I be willing to buy comic books for my children for 100 yuan a month?
The third is my father's toiletries. After my father died, I went to pack his belongings and was shocked to find my father's toothbrush and towel. How to describe it, his toothbrush, which has worn out to the point that there are not a few hairs left, is bare, like a fire stick; And his towel was already tattered like a rotten fishing net. For the sake of his body, his father opened a grocery store, and there were many toothbrushes and towels, but he didn't use one, so he was willing to use them. Although the father sent all three sons out to eat the state food, he did not enjoy a single day of happiness, nor was he willing to eat or use it. It is said that every time he goes to the commune office, he has to walk six hours back and forth on the mountain road, but he is not willing to eat even a dime of rice noodles.
It is very difficult to deliberately remember my father, and it is even more difficult to write about him, and in this cool autumn night, my father appeared vaguely but clearly in my mind. I, a writer who was enlightened and nurtured by my father, couldn't write a decent text for him, and I feel very sorry.
When my father died, the Taoist priest who had transcended for him said to me that my father had been transformed from the way of heaven and turned into a bird (a saying in my hometown that people become three things after death, one is to become a bird, one is to become a human, and the third is to become an earthworm), and I prefer to believe this statement: My poor father has become an unknown bird, and since then he has been flying freely in the vast sky, and has never been subjected to all kinds of torture in the world (my father was in a coma for 8 days, and the grain of rice did not enter, and his breathing was difficult, which was extremely difficult). There is so much food in the world, you can eat freely with confidence.
But, Father, I have been thinking that in the vast sky, in the vast wilderness, there are so many birds, I don't know which one is you. I can only have a glass of water and a piece of food on my windowsill, and ask you to fly over and look at me when you think of me, when you are tired, with that familiar smell of tobacco. Let me take a good look at you, my father, too.