My mother retired in the summer, and I went for a walk in a small park nearby every day after dinner. I thought that the days would pass like this. One very ordinary evening, my father bent down to tie his shoes while walking, and never got up, and when I arrived at the small park, the doctor also arrived, and pronounced him dead.

I couldn't cry when I hugged my father's corpse, I smelled the slight smell of sweat on his body, and I was in a trance, which obviously belonged to the smell of life, but the person was dead. Then his head slowly tilted over my shoulder, and the corners of his mouth suddenly bleed red from the hem of my clothes. It was the only time I came into contact with my father's blood, and it had a great impact on my soul that I would never let go of for many years.

At that time, I asked the emergency doctor, and the doctor said that myocardial infarction sometimes causes hemoptysis, and I don't know if it was perfunctory.

I can't remember how my father was dragged from Little Park to the funeral home. Because the level is enough, the funeral can be covered with the party flag, so basically the unit takes over the entire funeral. But in this way, all folklore things can't be done, things other than wreaths can't be placed, and the second uncle's desire to hire a band was also rejected, which made the second uncle very unhappy. However, after several efforts to finally reach a compromise, after the farewell ceremony organized by the unit on the last day, the funeral home can ask the band to play and sing on the road from the funeral home to the crematorium. The second uncle doesn't care what kind of taste it is to blow suona under the party flag.

I was exhausted from the three-day vigil, and in the middle of the night I often stood in front of my father's glass freezer and watched him, feeling his cheeks slowly sink along with mine. I fantasized that he would suddenly open his eyes and that I would smash the freezer to get him out.

I couldn't cry for the first two days of the funeral, and my second uncle was unhappy again, so I said to my second uncle, "If I could cry, it would be better." ”

At the last moment, I watched the party flag slowly put away, and when my father was pushed into the crematorium, I collapsed and cried and collapsed on the ground, and finally settled my second uncle's heart. I don't know how long I cried, the people on the side walked around as if they had forgotten my existence, and after a while I heard the sound of suona again, as if the corpses of other families had been blown and blown over.

Just as I was considering whether to wipe my snot and tears before getting up or to get up and dry them first, a pair of strong arms picked me up from behind.

Daddy Jiang's face is still so resolute, not as rounded as my father is because of middle age, but with more and deeper wrinkles, and it seems to be thinner than before. He hugged me hard, and I saw Mother Jiang behind him, looking at me with tears and pity in her eyes.

Mother Jiang also hugged me and whispered, "What a poor child, let's mourn and change." ”

At this time, Dad Jiang shouted at the crematorium behind me: "Lou Anguo, you can go with confidence, I will take care of the heavy rain!" ”

I couldn't hold back the tears that came down again.

The three of them were relatively speechless for a while, and Jiang's mother said for a while: "Xiaohe is abroad, so I don't have time to inform her." ”

At this time, the staff who had just collected the party flag came over, handed me the party flag, and reminded me to wait at the exit at the other end to collect the ashes.

Jiang's father didn't speak, Jiang's mother motioned for me to hurry up, and I said to them, "You two wait for me, I'll come to you later." ”

It's not the same as the fine ash you see on TV, but it's not all burned to ashes, so I don't know if it's the crematorium cutting corners. The crematorium smashed several large pieces in front of me, one of which I even suspected was a skull, and I said it was almost, and if I knocked it again, it would collapse in my mouth, and he didn't lift his head and put down the hammer and box it for me to take away.

The ashes were much heavier than I thought.

The cemetery has not been bought, and the urn is not allowed to be taken away, so it can only be stored in the funeral home. When I came back after completing the formalities, Jiang's mother and they had already left. I thought I would see them at the later feast, but they didn't show up.

Her mother was so devastated that she did not attend the funeral except for an appearance at the farewell ceremony. When I told her that I had seen Jiang Feng and his wife after eating, she looked at me thoughtfully, and then turned her head away with a blank face.

I sat in the living room and made tea and watched the news on my mobile phone, and made an appointment with the agent at half past eight, and he took someone to see the house. In addition, I also posted rental advertisements on some websites in the same city, and someone made an appointment to come and see the house this morning.

My ancestors were fishermen for eight generations, begging for a living in the wind and waves, and life was hard haha, and life in my grandfather's generation was even worse. Grandpa's health was poor and he couldn't go to the sea, so he learned the tailor's craft and walked the streets and alleys to make clothes for other people's homes, barely earning some money to support his family. When my grandfather died, my father and second uncle were very young and couldn't support a family, my grandmother was so strong that she refused to remarry, and she peeled oysters day and night to sell them for money. After graduating from high school, my father was admitted to the military academy, and after graduation, he went to distant Xinjiang. Grandma said that his father was very filial, and the army's allowance was basically sent home, at that time, the second uncle often owed money to avoid debts when he started a business, and his life was worse than before, and grandma said that he would have starved to death without this money.

I remember asking my father about it, and my father said lightly that the military academy did not require tuition and living expenses, and the salary of the army was the highest at that time.

What a banal and sad answer.

My grandfather is an old Tunken in Xinjiang, and my mother, like many other girls in the Corps, will find young talents in the army to marry when she reaches marriageable age. Come to think of it, the Han people in that small town in the desert have limited resources, and those with similar conditions are still soldiers except for soldiers.

Although Xiamen and Shenzhen belong to the same special zone, their development has not been fast before. Since the beginning of the 21 st century, the military balance between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait has changed, and the mainland has gained absolute superiority. It's a good time for our family to come back.

Urban development is inseparable from real estate, and as the city expands to every corner of the island, fishing villages no longer exist, dirty old houses become bright houses with sea views, and housing prices rise in response.

The few dilapidated houses left by the grandfather plus the pigsty thatched house were kept for themselves, and four suites and two storefronts were added during the demolition, which really benefited the children and grandchildren. My uncle's career was also thriving during this period, saying that he was taking care of his father, and he asked for the two small storefronts, and the house was given to my father, and my father was very wealthy.

When my grandmother was alive, whenever she talked about these great changes, she would always use Hokkien dialect to add a sentence in passing: "Your grandfather wanted to eat noodles when he was dying, no, no, it was raining heavily that day, and your father and your second uncle went everywhere to borrow them, but everyone didn't have them." I said to your grandfather, go over there and eat! ”

My grandmother doesn't speak Mandarin, and I don't understand Hokkien, so for a long time she spoke plainly, and I was accompanied by a smiling face.

Dad's eyes flushed every time he heard that. My mother later told me that when my father first got married, he once mentioned these things to her, and wept so hard that he couldn't control it.

Many Xiamen locals are in a similar situation to my family, and the demolition and relocation divided several houses, so some people find all kinds of reasons not to go out to work and live on rented houses. I'm in this state at the moment.

Mom has been in a bad state after the death of her father, everyone said that a change of environment is the best choice, it happened that the cousin of the aunt's family had just given birth, and the aunt took this as a reason, and even persuaded her a few days after the funeral to take her to Beijing.

The three sisters of my mother's family were all married to soldiers, my eldest uncle returned to Beijing, and my second aunt's family stayed in Urumqi.

Although the reason was very reluctant, my mother went to Beijing anyway, and I stayed in Xiamen alone for more than two months. My mother often urged me on the phone to find a job and find a girl as soon as possible, to live a normal life, and to hope to come back and help me take care of the children and so on. So I kept mixing it up because I wasn't normal, I was sick.

Dr. Meng gave me a diagnosis of long-term anxiety insomnia, which leads to depression. Of course, I didn't tell anyone about the illness except my father and me, saying that my health was not good, even if I could accept kidney deficiency, but it was not okay to say that my brain was not good.

I remember Wang Xiaobo said something that probably means that the universe and eternity are infinite, and we human beings are limited, he didn't like this metaphor very much, and when he thought about whether there was a greater meaning in the universe than human existence itself, he found that from the perspective of human beings, this meaning did not exist, so there was a lonely sea in front of him, and everything people did was just a game before death.

I hope he's wrong, but I think he's saying it well and profoundly. After my father died, I often thought about this, and if I thought about it too much, my condition did not progress. I kept reminding myself of how superficial I was, how incapable I was of thinking deeply about these issues, but I couldn't convince myself to accept the chaos of letting go. Death became a part of my life.

If every time someone you love leaves, a part of you dies, then I am already a half-dead person.

The appearance of Jiang Feng and his wife made me start to think of the Jiang family from time to time, thinking of Jiang He, why did they disappear at a glance, I worked hard to find them, but when my father died, they got the news to send them on the last journey, and they came and went in the dark, but they were always destined to leave me.