It was indeed very cold outside, although the old man in front of me had never known anything about his life, but this sentence made me suddenly full of good feelings for him, and even felt a little ashamed that I lied to him that I was a street worker before. After entering the door, the old man turned on the light at the entrance.

In fact, it is similar to what I imagined, and the conditions of this family are indeed not very good. As soon as I closed the door, it was a relatively narrow room, and on my right-hand side were several overlapping benches and a long table. On the table were some newspapers, and some mooncake boxes, zongzi boxes, etc., which had been flattened and placed together. Although there is a window at the end of the passage, there is not enough light. The walls on the left and right sides were painted dark green at the waist, but the top was white, but it was so mottled that there was a feeling that there was a lack of a piece in many places. When the light was turned on, I subconsciously looked up, and it was actually the most common incandescent chandelier, so I also saw the ceiling, which was not now called a decorative ceiling, but just prefabricated panels. In the corners of the recesses of the prefabricated slabs, there are also spider webs on top.

Hu Zongren and I followed the old man and continued to walk inside, and the old man said to us, you have never been to our house, you can just take a look, the situation is almost like this. So Hu Zongren raised his chin at me, meaning you just go and take a look. In fact, this house is not small in terms of area, there are three rooms alone, but they are all very small. One of them was on my right-hand side with a locked door, and I had no reason to open it, and there were two rooms on the left, and in the one on the right was a large round table, the kind of table for eating, but there were no benches, and there were only some miscellaneous items on the table, and there were fruit baskets, but the fruit basket contained a few balls of wool and a skewer for beating wool. There was a small cabinet, very old-fashioned, probably in the style of the cabinet in the early days of liberation. The room on the left was supposed to be the old man's bedroom, but I didn't go inside, but walked straight to the lighted place. When I walked there, I found that it was a T-shape, with the kitchen and eating area on the left, the toilet on the right, and the light in front of me was a very large-looking, glass-enclosed cubicle. There were some cage-like things piled up inside, but there was a lot of dust, and it looked like it hadn't been used for a long time.

I've never seen a cubicle like this, so out of curiosity, I asked the old man, what is the purpose of this place, uncle? He said that when he first retired a few years ago, he liked to raise pigeons, which was originally a balcony, so he modified it a little and made a pigeon nest, and at the most, he raised more than 100 pigeons. I nodded, then retreated, and the old man led me and Hu Zongren to his own bedroom.

This bedroom is very small, and the light is also a little insufficient, there is no window, the only light source is the door, outside the door is a small balcony with a bonsai rockery, and there are some washed and dried, or dried confiscated clothes. There was a carpentry bed on the side of the door, and unlike the shaped beds, this bed looked more like the old beds I had seen in those old towns before. Of course, it's not so beautiful, it's just a simple wooden stick and a wooden plank, and the place where the head of the bed extends out to form a cover for the whole bed, which should be used to hang mosquito nets here in summer. The old man asked us to sit down on the sofa on one side, and in the gap between the sofa and the wall, there were a few large rectangular iron sheets that I didn't know what to do with. The TV is on our right, and it's still an old TV, but it's a color TV.

The old man also sat down on the rattan chair, and there was a small table between him and us, and it was not a table in fact, it was just a small square stool as a seat, and a wooden board with a chess board painted on the Chu River and Han realms as a table. I say table only because there is an ashtray and teacup on it.

When I saw the ashtray, I knew that the old man was smoking, so I quickly took out a cigarette and handed it to him, and lit it for him, and the old man said, I am very happy that you came to see me and Lao Zhang. After saying that, he turned his head to the left side of his body, there was a chest-high cabinet, with drawers and glass panels under the cabinet, but the glass was still the kind of old furniture that used to be opened and closed by swiping left and right. Through the glass, I saw that there were some things that looked like candy boxes or biscuit boxes, and on the top of the cabinet, there was a statue of Guanyin, and an incense burner candlestick, and behind the candlestick was a black and white photo of an old man.

Needless to say, the one in this photo is naturally Zhang's mother. The old man said to the photo, old woman, the street sent people to see us, but the country still hasn't forgotten us. I'm ashamed, but I'd like to say that they probably forgot, I just lied to you. But at this point, I thought that maybe the old people might not know the truth, so let's save these words, why bother to make people feel bad. So I tugged at Hu Zongren's sleeve, and then we both stood up together and bowed three times to the portrait of Zhang's mother.

After sitting down, Hu Zongren asked the old man and said, before we came, we only knew that Zhang's mother died, but we don't know what the reason was, if you can accept it, can you tell us? Because when we came here, we met a few neighbors in your building on the way, and they said something about the situation, which we thought was very unscientific.

Hu Zongren, a metaphysical person, said to an old man who was a little confused that this was not scientific, which in itself was a very unscientific thing. Who knows that after the old man heard Hu Zongren say this, he actually snorted and said, did these neighbors say that my wife was killed by someone, saying that someone here burned incense downstairs before, causing my wife to be in good health, and suddenly went like this, right? Hu Zongren said again and again that when I was making trouble with him this afternoon, the old man in front of him actually knew about the taboos and rumors among the neighbors. The old man continued, don't listen to their nonsense, my wife has always been a very kind person, she worships the Buddha, has a good temperament, and will not be killed, she is because she sleeps at night and gets up at night, but suddenly loses her balance and falls off the bed, and dies of a stroke. It was night when I died, and it was already morning when I found out. When he said this, the old man began to feel a little sad, but when he reached his age, many things had actually been seen, and sadness was sadness, but he would not cry, so this pain of losing his wife, in my opinion, sadness has become a kind of sadness.

But I still don't understand that it's normal for these old people to wake up at night, but they usually don't sleep as deeply as us young people, so it should be easier for them to wake up. No matter how thin this mother is, she has to weigh dozens of pounds to say anything, and it is quiet in the evening, and it is easy to be noticed if there is a little movement, and one of the couple fell to the ground, how could the other not know at the time and find the body in the morning? With this question, I asked the old man, and the old man said that in fact, the couple had been sleeping in separate rooms for many years, and at their age, many families were like this. So Zhang's mother's room was originally the room where Zhang's mother slept, but the uncle's own room was the room with the door locked. I sighed with understanding, so Zhang's mother died of a stroke, and the cause of her death was actually nothing to do with ghosts and gods, and it was caused by the body's own illness and accident. So what is the reason why Zhang's mother failed to detach after her death, although she did not become a ghost, but she also became a ghost? In addition, this mother herself is a Buddha worshipper, so it stands to reason that she will be more open-minded and easy to think open, which makes me a little confused.

Hu Zongren continued to ask the old man, was there anything that Zhang's mother couldn't let go of during her lifetime, such as the unfulfilled wish that the two of you had made an appointment? The old man smiled faintly and said, we are all this age, we can't walk, we can be content to walk around, what else can I wish, the biggest wish is not to live a few more years in good health, and the children will come back to see us.

Child! Is it because of the relationship between the children? So I added and asked, "Aren't you all around, old man?" The old man shook his head and said, there are three children, the eldest and the second are all daughters, although they often come back to see us after getting married, but they also have families and children, and their energy is limited, so generally everyone comes back for a meal together every three or five weekends, and they all get together for the New Year's holiday. The third son is the youngest son, the work is busy, and he is the first official in the family, so he comes back relatively little, sometimes he comes back and leaves soon, every time the son brings himself a lot of good cigarettes and wine, moon cakes and dumplings or something, we two old people, where can we finish eating, it is not three days to call the children to come back and eat together.

The old man had a smile on his face when he talked about his children, and it seemed that although he missed his children, he also fully understood his children, and from his words, it seemed that the children were very filial, and they did not feel like they had not visited the old man for a long time. So I asked the old man again, did that mother have any special favorite things or things during her lifetime? Also, Zhang's mother was cremated, right? The old man nodded and said that she has many hobbies, she gets up very early every morning and goes to the park to practice swords, and when she finishes, she goes to buy vegetables and cooks at home, and in the afternoon she also likes to watch Huangmei Opera and play sweaters. After speaking, the old man pointed to the sweater on his body that was already a little tattered but had been mended many times, and there were still some threads and said, "The one on my body, which the children wear, is all woven by my wife herself, and I have worn it for many years, and I am used to it, but I am not used to it if I don't wear it."

Speaking of this, the old man smiled warmly.