I will miss you forever, I left my father in 2020

My father’s life is forever fixed at 13:20 pm on October 31, 2020. When my father left, there were tears in the corners of his eyes. With infinite attachment, reluctance and regret for this world, he left us forever.

After my father left, I couldn’t breathe for several days. No matter what I did or who I met, I was listless. My mind was filled with the image of my father. Especially when I was alone, I thought about my father. As I thought about it, tears fell down unconsciously, and every bit of my father's life came to mind.

1. Looking at my hometown in the distance is full of nostalgia

The day my father left It happened to be a full moon, and I watched the empty mourning hall and had no sleep all night. The bright moon outside the window shuttles among the clouds, which naturally reminds me of the hometown where I was born and raised: the earthen house we lived in when I was a child, the cedar forest outside the back door of the earthen house; the several acres of rice fields and vegetable plots that I have planted, and the buffaloes; washing vegetables by the weir pond in the morning and fetching water from the old well by the village; having dinner on the field to enjoy the cool weather in the summer and watching martial arts movies on the black and white TV; and during the busy farming season, planting rice seedlings, cutting grain, and growing vegetables. The scene when I went to the mountains to peel cotton, dig sweet potatoes, collect firewood... In all these cases, my father's figure was looming, as if it was yesterday.

I try hard to remember, but my memory is very fuzzy. All I can remember are a few things that left a deep impression on me. According to my mother, my father is a diligent and intelligent man. Although he only went to the third grade when he was young, he was very good at arithmetic and accounting. When he was young, he was recommended by the team to work in the county. He worked in Jingshan Chengguan, Songhe, and Luo Diansan Bank is engaged in agricultural finance work. As far back as I can remember, my father has been working in a bank for several years, and my mother teaches in a village primary school. My family belongs to half of the family and has 6 acres of thin farmland. My father carries both ends of the farm on his shoulders and rushes back and forth.

We have four brothers and sisters, two boys and two girls. When I was about 8 years old, my father built two adobe houses for us brothers. He was afraid that the suffering of the previous generation would happen to the next generation again. At least we would have a "nest" to live in when we got married and started a family. But in that era of poverty and poverty, it was very difficult to build a house.

In order to build two adobe houses, my parents worked from dawn to dusk to raise building materials. At that time, adobe bricks were made from mud from the rice fields. First, buffaloes dragged stone rollers to crush the mud from the rice fields, and then used brick-making plows to cut the mud into pieces, and then exposed them to the sun and dried them. Later, it became adobe material for building houses.

My mother used her thin body to pick up heavy adobe bricks from the brick field, while my father went alone to the mountains at the junction of Jingshan and Suizhou to buy wood for building houses and made it into purlins. , rafters, and hired a master mason from the market town. After more than a month, two adobe houses were built. When I was in elementary school in Dashu Village, I basically spent my time in a mud house. I have lingering memories there.

2. Looking back on the road to education is the deep love of a father

In 1986, I graduated from elementary school and went to middle school in Luodian Town, where I lived with my father. Together. That year I was admitted to Guohe Key Middle School. In order to give me a good environment, my father bought a gift and went to the principal of the middle school to transfer me from a remote mountain village to Luodian Middle School, which had better conditions. .

Living with my father, I live a carefree life without having to worry about anything. I remember that every morning, my father would get up early, cook a bowl of egg soup for us brothers, and then buy a few steamed buns or steamed buns in the cafeteria. After eating, we would go to school. After the morning self-study at school began, the noodles would be cooked every day, and we would come back to eat after the morning self-study in the afternoon. Three meals a day, rarely missed.

When I was in junior high school in Luodian, I worked very hard and was the class monitor for three years. My father rarely asked me about my academic performance. He believed that I must be diligent and studious when sitting in the classroom, so he never discounted my request for money to buy study materials. When he graduated from junior high school, his father was transferred from Luodian Town to Madian Town, a newly established town. That year, I always suffered from rhinitis, which caused head pain. In the second year of high school entrance examination, I was not admitted to Jingshan No. 1 Middle School as my father wanted, but only to Jingshan No. 4 Middle School (Luodian High School).

In those years, it was a very honorable thing to be admitted to university. Being admitted to Beijing No. 1 Middle School was equivalent to having one foot in the university gate.

My father told me that he had found out that with an extra two thousand yuan, I could go to Beijing No. 1 Middle School based on my high school entrance examination score at that time. He asked me if I wanted to go. Because I was worried that my family would not be able to come up with the money at once, or that I might not be able to keep up with my studies if I go to Jingshan No. 1 Middle School, which is a strong school, I gave up decisively.

After I entered ordinary high school, my father had almost no hope for me to enter college. He hoped that I would finish high school for three years. If the banking system could arrange employment for my children, he would just ask me to work. It felt like I don't have the talent to go to college.

In July 1992, I graduated from high school without repeating my studies. I chose the job my father arranged for me - a tertiary industry enterprise run by the County Agricultural Bank of China, selling shoes in a shoe and hat cabinet and home appliance counter in a shopping mall. , sell appliances.

During this period of time, I just left school, and when I was eighteen or nineteen years old, I suddenly entered society and was at a loss. Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and take a long-distance bus to Hanzheng Street to buy goods; sometimes I follow the manager to Wuhan to haul home appliances, and to Hunan to haul firecrackers back to Beijing to sell them. Those days were really hard. Sometimes I was just a porter, carrying hundreds of kilograms of toothpaste boxes and washing powder boxes on Hanzheng Street, which made my shoulders sore. Especially sometimes, I had to pretend to smile. , drinking with others, I was so drunk that I got drunk several times, and it took me several days to recover.

In the first month of work, I was paid a salary of 58 yuan, which was too much to make ends meet. I felt that this kind of life could not continue like this, so I told my parents that I still wanted to study. My parents agreed that I should quit my job in the shopping mall and return to Jingshan No. 2 Middle School (绀NU Middle School) to resume my studies. After one semester, my grades were not very satisfactory, and I felt that it was still difficult to get into college. My mother went to school to inquire about my grades from the class teacher and asked for the teacher's opinion on whether I should work or go to school. The head teacher advised my mother that if there is a class, she should just go to work.

Going to school, going to work, and so on over and over again, my father once again went to say good things to the president, and I walked into the mall for the second time. This time I stopped standing at the counter and went directly to the warehouse.

While guarding the warehouse, I continued to review high school textbooks, thinking only of going to college. In 1994, after taking the Adult College Entrance Examination, I successfully entered the Agricultural Bank of China Wuhan Management Cadre College to study full-time, fulfilling my university dream. At that time, I remember the tuition fee for one year was 3,000 yuan. But even with this 3,000 yuan, it is quite difficult for the family to come up with it. Fortunately, that year, the employer where my parents worked had a salary increase, and I was able to make up to several thousand yuan in compensation. Then with the support of my parents, I left the employer and went to college.

One year I went to college, the school my father sent me to. When I went out, my mother repeatedly told me that I must take a group photo at the entrance of the university as a souvenir. Following my mother's instructions, my father, my brother, I took a group photo by the flower bed on Zhongbei Road in Wuchang, with the college's gilded characters behind us. At that time, we were in our prime and full of youth. Although my father was thin but not old, he had a good smile and looked forward to a bright future. When I saw the photo with my father again, it seemed like just yesterday.

3. It is a deep expectation to hope that my son will get married

After graduating from college in 1997, I have been working in Wuhan. It wasn't until 2000 that I returned home to get married.

Before, my parents had been urging me to get married, saying that since the eldest son was no longer young, he should find someone to get married to, and then they could start a business and build a small family together.

After get off work, my father would concentrate on feeding pigs in the pig pen in the yard of the Agricultural Bank of China. He would feed at least two fat pigs a year, one of which would be sold and the other used for the Chinese New Year. Every time I come home from Wuhan, my father always says, the pig you marry has been fattened. When are you going to get married?

When I was young, I always had many thoughts. I had no career, no love. I always wanted to wait a few more years. If I waited, I would get older. When I was 28 years old, I met a college girl from the same village who worked in the unit next door in the town, so I started to yearn for a relationship, and they got married soon after. The big fat pigs fed by my father also came in handy, killing more than 300 kilograms of meat, and it was lively for several days.

I remember that when I got married, my parents gave me 20,000 yuan, which was all saved through frugality. Later, I spent more than 10,000 yuan to buy a second-hand house in Jingshan, with an area of ????80 square meters. This is when I truly settled down in Jingshan.

After my child was born, I stopped going out to work. I worked for several years in a newspaper office and a private school in the county. The salary was generally about 500 yuan per month. My child went to kindergarten and my family lived well. During this period of poverty, we relied on our parents to help us and accompany us through this difficult period. It wasn't until 2005 that I passed the unit establishment examination with my own hard work, and my job became stable, with a monthly salary of more than 1,000 yuan. Later, I saved some money to buy an apartment and lived separately from my parents.

After my father retired, he was always restless. He planted a vegetable plot in front of and behind the house and planted cucumbers, beans, cabbage, tomatoes, etc. Every summer, the vegetable garden grew lush and lush, and every other They prepare many fresh dishes for us every few days. In his spare time, my father would sometimes go fishing at the channel of Huiting Reservoir and in the Jingshan River, and play mahjong for one dollar with the old people in the yard. His life was quite leisurely.

My father lives an extremely frugal life and is always reluctant to spend even a penny. In my memory, my father almost never bought himself a new piece of clothing. Either his mother bought it for him, or his children bought it for him. The best clothes only cost a few hundred yuan. When he got older, he always liked to pick up plastic bottles and old newspapers thrown away by others, save them, and then sell them at scrap collection stations. It only costs a few dollars or a dozen dollars each time. We always advise him not to pick it up, because it’s not like he doesn’t have a pension. But he was always unwilling to listen. Even when eating in a restaurant, he would take the finished bottle home and save it for pocket money. My father was used to hard work all his life.

My father has a hobby that never stops drinking. For as long as I can remember, my father has been eating and drinking three times a day. The wine my father drank was very common local wine. In the early days, he drank slate rice wine for 50 cents per catty. After moving to Jingshan, he drank sorghum wine for 50 or 60 yuan per catty. He drank it for decades. Once, when I came back from an interview in Moutai Town, Kweichow, I brought him some local Moutai wine for him to taste, but he was not used to it.

My father loved wine, but he was never picky about whether there was food on the table. I remember when I was a child, my father’s dish with wine was often a bowl of salted peas or a plate of Qianzhang dried seeds, which were delicious to drink. Many times, my father always cooks by himself. The food he cooks tastes very good, especially his fried shredded green pepper pork and eel, which are fresh and tender when put in hot oil. There are also fried peppers, molded tofu, and pickles he makes, all of which are delicious and have endless aftertaste. But now, we can no longer eat the dishes cooked by our father.

My father loves to drink, but I have never seen him become drunk because of drinking. He swallows the ups and downs of life by himself. He rarely scolded our children, whether their academic performance was good in school, or whether there were any conflicts between husband and wife after marriage. Apart from words of encouragement, he rarely scolded us. When it comes to children studying and taking exams, he thinks it’s good if they do their best; when it comes to marriage and family, it’s good if the family is harmonious. He said that a person's ability is always limited, and you can't get whatever you want. As long as you have a dream, it is commendable to work hard for it. Don't always have more money than others. He was honest, never fought or grabbed, stayed aloof from the world, and worked quietly all his life. Under the guidance of this kind of ideological education, several of our children and his grandchildren have also been admitted to first-class universities.

After 2000, my father became seriously ill twice. Once in 2007, he had a cholecystectomy due to gallstones; and once in 2018, he had a pacemaker installed at Tongji Hospital due to heart disease. But my father recovered very well. He can still eat and drink, has good hearing and vision, and thinks clearly. He reads "Journey to the West" and "Bright Sword" every day, and sometimes plays mahjong with the old man in the yard. But in the past two years, my father's drinking has not been as good as before. He can't even drink one or two wines at each meal. Every time he pours wine at the table, he has to add a little tea to the wine to make the wine taste lighter. My father said that one day he could no longer drink and his life would come to an end.

4. Staring at my father is like longing for me

In the summer of July and August, my father’s health was still good. After dinner every day, he and his mother would go for a walk in People's Square. They could circle around People's Square three or five times. He walked very fast, always leaving his mother behind. At that time, I never thought that my father would not survive 2020.

As October approaches, the weather is a little cooler.

My mother suddenly told me that my father’s diet was not as good as before, perhaps at the end of this year or early next year, and she asked us to quickly go to the cemetery and choose a burial site in our free time.

Perhaps because I was worried that my father would really leave, I also blamed my mother for saying some unlucky words. Because my father suffers from heart disease, lung disease, thyroid disease, enteritis and other comprehensive diseases, he always has to stay in the hospital once or twice a year. I thought he would be the same as before, that he would get better soon and be able to drink from his glass. But no.

My father always complained of pain from the head and neck to the heart. He was afraid that he had cancer. Therefore, I decided to use the National Day holiday to take him to Wuhan Tongji Hospital to find out.

On October 3, the weather was cold and gloomy. Taking advantage of the National Day holiday, I once again drove my father to Wuhan Tongji Hospital for medical treatment.

The car was driving on the highway, but I was thinking a lot. It was the same situation in October 2012 and February 2018. I took my parents to Tongji for medical treatment. Once my mother had cataract surgery, and once my father had a pacemaker installed. Both surgeries saved the day.

This time I went to Tongji Hospital to see a doctor, and there were still huge crowds of people. Due to the epidemic, it is very difficult to see a doctor. You need to scan the health code wherever you go. The old father runs from upstairs to downstairs, from the hotel to the hospital, from the outpatient clinic to the examination room, and is exhausted both physically and mentally.

The beds in the hotel next to the hospital are very soft, and the air conditioning is fully turned on, making it very warm and comfortable. During meal time, I order food through Meituan and have the food delivered to the room, with meat and vegetables mixed every time. But I found that my father only ate half a bowl of porridge at every meal, and he didn't eat much other dishes. Sleeping at night, tossing and turning, and getting up many times during the night.

After three days in Wuhan, my father checked the pacemaker and thyroid gland, and did a neck-enhanced CT scan, but no cancer was found that he was worried about. In addition, my father was worried about the expense of staying in a hotel every day and clamored to go home, so he had no choice but to return to Jingshan.

After returning from Wuhan, my father was admitted to the People's Hospital. I stayed in the hospital for a week, still not eating or drinking, and still complaining about pain here and there. If the tumor metastasis is written on the doctor's diagnosis, it is recommended to be transferred to a higher-level hospital for diagnosis and treatment. In this case, my father was discharged from the hospital and returned home, ready to seek medical treatment after his condition stabilized.

After returning, my father’s condition became worse day by day, so he spent three days in a nearby community hospital receiving energy therapy, but it still didn’t improve. At this time, he could no longer even drink porridge. He only drank a little honey water every day. His body was losing weight day by day, which was unbearable to look at. Sometimes it’s not even sitting down or lying down. My father was asleep most of the time and was in pain when he was awake. We talked to him and gently touched the painful areas with our hands, which made him feel better.

October 31st, the 15th day of the ninth lunar month, is my mother’s birthday. My uncle and aunt (my father’s brother and sister), as well as my aunt, uncle and many other relatives came to visit my father. My father met them one by one, shook hands, and wanted to speak, but couldn't.

When my father left, I stayed by his side. At 13:20 in the afternoon, my father's breathing stopped. When he left, his eyes were open and tears were streaming from the corners of his eyes. I think he was thinking about his grandchildren who were in college and he was unable to see them for the last time. He left us forever with infinite attachment, reluctance and regret for this world.

My father shed his last tear like a candle. I gently closed my father's eyes with my hands and watched him fall asleep peacefully and go to a place far, far away.

When parents are here, there is still a way to go in life; when parents are gone, there is only a way back in life. After my father left, I couldn't breathe for several days and felt very depressed. I often think that if we had followed the doctor’s instructions and transferred my father to a bigger and better hospital in time, he might have lived longer; if I had insisted on keeping my father in Wuhan for treatment during the National Day; if I had not been there during those days In order to prepare the speech materials for the graduation ceremony of the party school, I took a few days off to accompany my father to the provincial capital for medical treatment; if we all paid more attention to my father's illness and cared more, maybe this would not be the case. But there are really no ifs... Once someone loses a loved one in life, they understand a truth: except life and death, everything is a trivial matter that can be ignored.

After his father left, his mother cleaned up his clothes and found a note written by his father in the corner of an old wooden box. He was born in 1937, started working in 1958, and joined the party in 1960. At his father's memorial service, the person in charge of the Agricultural Bank of China recalled his father's ordinary and poor life. "60 years of party experience." Immersed in the atmosphere of great sadness, I stared at my father's portrait and heard these words clearly. Perhaps this was the best evaluation the organization gave my father in his life.

On the morning of November 2, 2020, I gently placed my father’s urn in the Mashaquan Cemetery. Standing on the top of the hill above my father's cemetery and looking towards the city, it was easy to find where my family lived. (Huang Xiaoming)