She will not be able to taste her father’s famous white chopped chicken and diced meat, the big dumplings that must be wrapped for the holidays, and she will not be able to experience what “reunion” is.
Right now, the Spring Festival is approaching, Luo Xuan’s mother currently declined the invitation to spend the New Year with her daughter, but still enthusiastic about buying New Year’s Eve goods.
Take Wuhan bus 578, after 18 stops, until the end of the station Hanyang Gate, Wuchang, Luo Xuan mother can reach a chain of large supermarkets. The supermarket at Home is close by, but she is too expensive. Luo Xuan’s father loved to eat the Hong Kong cake downstairs supermarket sold 13.8 yuan, that big supermarket as long as 6 yuan. She bought Hong Kong cakes, rice cakes, chocolate and snacks. Hong Kong cakes were put in the offering box in front of Luo Xuan’s father’s statue, while rice cakes, chocolates and snacks were the Food loved by the two grandchildren.
Although she and Luo Xuan do not say so, they both count down to the coming of Chinese New Year. Because once New Year’s Eve arrives, in ten days, it will be the first anniversary of Luo Xuan’s father’s death.
Two Dreams
Under the warm winter sun, Luo Xuan’s Parents downstairs on the small square, an old man back and forth three or four times, will be a bed of sheets held on an aluminum iron frame, hanging, smoothing. A pair of middle-aged men and women in the side, a sword dance, a play Tai Chi soft ball, each turned on loud Music, but each other do not think disturbing.
Time slips by silently and softly here. In this small square, Luo Xuan father had taught his grandson to learn to ride a bicycle, leisure time, he always bring his grandchildren here to chase the frolic.
Today, the children still come to the small square to play, but there is no more grandfather behind them.
Not long ago, my daughter asked her grandfather (the children have always called grandpa “grandpa”) what happened to the new crown? Luo Xuan calmly explained to her daughter: Grandpa’s lungs were eroded by a virus. The lungs help us breathe, send oxygen to the blood, the lungs can not move, the air can not enter the body, people without oxygen, can not function.
Not only the two children, this year, Luo Xuan also time and again to think about what is Life? What is death? What does death really mean?
On March 25, 2020, Luo Xuan ran out of the district with the work release certificate issued by the unit. In the wind and heavy rain, her heart was beating wildly.
Although only 1 kilometer apart, she and her mother had not seen each other for more than 60 days because of Wuhan’s “closed control” policy. On the way, she imagined how she would jump up and hug her mother tightly, but the moment she walked in the door, she stood still and could not move.
She could not restrain herself from tears, looking at her mother’s deliberately busy figure, Luo Xuan finally said the words that should have been said 24 days ago, “Dad is gone”.
The mother wore a mask and sat a meter away, motionless and calm as water. Seeing her howling, her mother said lightly, “Don’t cry, your eyes are broken.
The mother asked Luo Xuan, “Is your father left on the 20th? Those days, I always dream of someone sitting at the head of the bed, chattering about something. “The mother also said that at that time she saw a clip on the TV news where the doctor pointed to a patient and said, “This person is so sick that there is no need to even resuscitate him “.
She insisted that it was her husband, “The jacket and the big pants were exactly like your father’s, they really were”. Watching the TV, she sat on the sofa and said to herself, “If you really can’t, I’ll send you back home”. After saying that, she sneezed.
Luo Xuan didn’t tell her mother that she also had a dream just in those days. It was a more concrete dream.
In the dream, my father came back empty-handed, wearing the same clothes he left home in. Luo Xuan asked her father, “Why did you come back, who sent you back? Father replied: my aunt sent me back. On the side of the mother just crying, leaning against the living room window not to come closer.
Luo Xuan knew that his father had passed away, and the aunt he spoke of had also passed away many years ago. The father offered to take a bath. While he was taking a shower, Luo Xuan’s husband’s cell phone was playing a story, which said that “if a person’s wish is not fulfilled, his soul will always be floating in the world”.
Luo Xuan blamed her husband for playing so loudly, but suddenly she saw her father standing by the stove wrapped in a red quilt, looking out in awe. She could not see her father’s face, only his nose.
She woke up from her dream and asked herself if she had forgotten her father’s first seven days, only to find that it had been just two days since his death.
After that, she never dreamed of her father again. This became the only dream she had about her father and his last goodbye to her.
Relics and Secrets
This year, Luo Xuan repeatedly reviewed her father’s departure with her mother. She realized that her father had been in discomfort as early as two weeks before he went to the doctor, but had not told her. The last time her father went to Luo Xuan’s house he was wearing a mask; otherwise, the couple and their son and daughter, who were in elementary school, would have been exposed to the virus.
Luo Xuan’s father began experiencing low fever, vomiting and diarrhea on January 26, 2020, and was not admitted to the hospital until February 5. During that time, he had been diagnosed with new crown pneumonia and had moved to six large and small hospitals in Wuhan, but was unable to get a bed.
Luo Xuan parents through the late night overnight queue, Luo Xuan had in the government department helpline telephone lost his voice crying. If not for Luo Xuan’s father’s colleagues pulling Luo Xuan directly into the unit’s colleague group, Luo Xuan’s father would not have gotten their help and successfully entered the Wuhan Union Hospital West Hospital to receive treatment.
In order to report progress to the aunts and uncles and to say thank you, Luo Xuan specially instructed her husband to take a picture of her father. The photo framed the last appearance of the father in the eyes of relatives – a black suit, a leather hat, a black suitcase, sitting inside the ambulance.
In the suitcase, Luo Xuan stuffed apples, milk, clothes, photos of his own children, and a copy of Jia Pingwa’s “Self Alone”.
Eight days before he was admitted to the hospital, Luo Xuan had a video call with his father. The father was wheezing so badly that the hospital sent immunoglobulin twice. Once the husband pleaded with the security guard to send it to the ward, and then once, the security guard was determined not to release it, the nurse kept urging, and finally the husband put the stuff in the elevator that transported the remains, and the nurse waited upstairs to take it out.
February 13, after the father inserted the ventilator, completely no news. Luo Xuan was worried, while comforting herself: no news, is the best news.
The miracle didn’t happen, but at 8:30 a.m. on Feb. 21, the call finally came. The hospital doctor said, your father is no longer. Luo Xuan begged the other side, can you resuscitate a little more. Half an hour later, she received the call again, “the person is gone.
After the death of her father, the things brought to the hospital were disposed of uniformly, back to Luo Xuan’s hands only the father’s cell phone, ID card, medical insurance card and a bank card. In the hospital refrigerator, there are still a few bottles of immunoglobulin left over from the father, Luo Xuan do not want, let the hospital handle.
After Luo Xuan informed his father’s death, his mother calmly made two decisions: one is to bury his father back home in Yulin, Guangxi, with his parents and siblings have a companion; the second is to give the old Family a sum of money, considered his father’s last thoughts to them.
In order to find out the passwords of bank cards, passbooks and stocks, Luo Xuan had to break into one of her father’s relics.
This is the first time she seriously sat down in front of the drawer of her father’s desk. Opening the drawer, she saw one of her father’s notebooks. Those notebooks have a long history, recording the complicated data and party class notes recorded by her father when he was a radar soldier more than 30 years ago. In one of the remittance slips, she found the secrets her father had not confided in for decades.
Less than a few thousand, more than a few tens of thousands, the payee of each remittance slip is her father’s brother in his hometown in rural Guangxi. The most recent one was in December 2019, when her father remitted 10,000 yuan to Luo Xuan’s ninth uncle.
Luo Xuan took these remittance sheets to his mother to see, his mother did not resent his father, but just dawned on him and said, “No wonder he always a piece of two pieces can not be spared, so he is the ferry, not just ferry their own family, daughter’s home, but also to take care of brothers and sisters home “.
Eventually, Luo Xuan in a passbook, found the father often set the password. In front of the bank counter, her mother sat and she stood aside. She hesitated and handed the death certificate folded in half into the glass window – she didn’t want her mother to see that piece of paper and look at her father’s death that straight.
A few minutes later, her mother said she was not feeling well and stood outside the bank door to get some air. So, Luo Xuan sat at the counter. Soon, she was on pins and needles and wanted to escape immediately. She had opened accounts at the bank and withdrawn money, but it was the first time she had done business for her deceased father.
She tried to tell herself that her father was still in the hospital, just hospitalized and did not return. But then, the reality was relentlessly straightforward. Her heart, so painful.
Soon, she will understand that the bank card “cancellation” is just the beginning. She must personally let her father gradually recede in this real world, until he finally disappears.
The road we traveled together
In the late afternoon, in front of the entrance to the neighborhood where Luo Xuan’s parents live, the blue tent with “Civil Affairs Disaster Relief” is broadcasting a burst of Epidemic prevention knowledge. A middle-aged man’s voice said “Be the first person responsible for your own health” in a clear voice.
From here, go west for dozens of meters, the wall on the right side of the road will appear a sign in red letters with a yellow background, which reads “zero infection district”, where is Luo Xuan live The place is where Luo Xuan lives.
Continue forward, the road up the slope, one side of the road with fruit stalls, welding store, newsstand, the other side is a few buildings to be demolished. When you get to the intersection, the old neighborhoods lined up in a row are left behind, and there are tall buildings and busy avenues in front of you.
Further ahead, you will arrive at Wuhan Sand Lake Park – when Luo Xuan’s father was alive, his parents always took a walk here. They often took their children to play in the park’s sand pits and pretended to fish with the long, spiky leaves at the edge of the lake. After Luo Xuan’s father was gone, Luo Xuan’s mother still walked alone on this road every day, visiting the same park lake.
Luo Xuan’s mother was very light-natured, and over the years, her father took care of the cooking and other household chores, being both her mother’s husband and her only close friend. They took daily walks together, visiting unvisited places on the newly opened subway line, and when Dad cooked, Mom would talk with her on the sidelines.
After her dad died, Luo Xuan was worried about her mother, but she always said she was busy and had to learn to cook and take care of the household chores. She was like a girl growing up again, learning how to get her disordered life back on track in one vegetable and one dish. She told Luo Xuan, every day after breakfast will go for a walk to the sand lake, back to prepare lunch, so on and so forth, just three meals a day to keep themselves busy.
The mother did not want Luo Xuan and the children to visit her. If Luo Xuan insisted, she would wash and dry clothes in advance and disinfect the whole room. She already had an old illness of pulmonary atelectasis, and with close contact with her husband, she always saw herself as a potential source of transmission carrying the new coronavirus.
It was not until May 2020, when universal nucleic acid testing was introduced in Wuhan, that Luo Xuan’s mother received a conclusive conclusion: she tested negative for nucleic acid and positive for serum antibodies, meaning that she had been infected by the new coronavirus and had now recovered on her own. Only after this did mother and daughter remove their masks while sitting opposite each other at home.
But Luo Xuan could still feel her mother’s distance. In the past, her mother helped clean the house almost every week, and often played with her children at home with her father. Now, the mother rarely go to Luo Xuan’s house, even to send something, but also only to the door, unwilling to enter the house.
So close, but they began to get used to meeting by video.
In August, a peacock mistakenly entered the neighborhood. For several days in a row, my mother woke up to the sound of the peacock’s call. Overflowing with rare joy, she learned, under Luo Xuan’s guidance, to show the peacock to her two grandsons on video with a rear camera. Three days later, the peacock leaves, and her mother, somewhat uncomfortable, rants about the peacock disrupting her routine.
Towards the end of the summer, Luo Xuan noticed that her mother began to become forgetful. She would forget to pay for her groceries, forget that Luo Xuan had taught her to use Alipay to transfer money, forget that someone had come to the house to fix the cable TV. She told Luo Xuan that this year’s life was always like a dream.
She couldn’t sleep half the night, her feet had a circle of red bumps, and her head had a patch of baldness. Luo Xuan was distressed but had no other choice but to buy all kinds of vitamins for her mother that she didn’t know if they were useful.
By November, her mother finally agreed to let Luo Xuan help her cut her hair. She said, “This hair is your father to cut well, I originally wanted to cut a year later, but now hair loss is so strong, cut it. “
For many years, my mother had short, floppy hair, and when her hair grew long, my father helped her fix it. After my father left, my mother’s hair grew a little longer until it was shoulder length.
It was a weekend morning. Luo Xuan picked up her father’s haircutting tools, which she didn’t know how many times she had used, and began her work. Holding her mother’s thinning hair, she felt a bitter taste in her heart, as the thick hair she was so proud of now had little weight in her hands.
Luo Xuan often gives haircuts to her sons and daughters, but her mother’s haircut is a little different. She gently wet her mother’s hair, divided it into wisps, and used scissors to sharply cut her long hair short, symmetrically unifying the length on both sides, and then carefully cutting the sideburns on the side of her face.
After washing, blow-drying, the mother turned back to the short hair in the past, the gray hair looks more thin. Luo Xuan and father who cut better? The mother did not evaluate, Luo Xuan also did not ask. In this way, the daughter quietly took over an important duty that her father had carried on for years.
A ritual that was never prepped
No matter how much the delay was avoided, the time finally pointed to October. From the time mother and daughter decided to bury the ashes back in Guangxi, they counted down to the day. At first, because of the “city closure”, they could put the matter off again and again, but when relatives back home asked someone to calculate the date, everything became inevitable.
On the way to the funeral home to receive the ashes, Luo Xuan’s mother chanted all the way, “We passed by here when we went to the hospital”. “So big a living person with a suitcase to go to the doctor, back on such a small box” …… she was depressed, but still did not shed tears.
Because there is still time to go to Guangxi, they will be the ashes temporarily existed in the district belonging to the regional funeral home. During the period, Luo Xuan received a phone call from the community, asking if he could first register his father’s ashes have been buried, the system needs this “hook”, before forgetting his father’s funeral matters. Luo Xuan agreed.
Near the departure date, because the family car is red, Luo Xuan and her husband selected in advance to rent the vehicle, without any hesitation, we agreed – Luo Xuan couple to Guangxi, the mother stayed to take care of the children.
October 24, Luo Xuan and her husband set off. Father’s effigy wrapped in cloth, with a roof-like urn, wearing a seat belt, placed squarely in the back seat of the car.
The number of times Luo Xuan returned to her hometown was only a few, and driving back was the first time. She knows that her father, who left home to join the military at a young age, has a deep attachment to his hometown, and went back to live for two months in the first year after retirement, and after Luo Xuan’s second baby was born, the whole family went back to live together for a month. Luo Xuan mother because of the experience of the youth to the countryside, do not want to return to the countryside, so Luo Xuan father even after retirement is still settled in Wuhan, can only occasionally return to the hometown.
This time, my father could finally return to his hometown for a long sleep. All the way, the sky was blue and the white clouds were sparse. Luo Xuan and his father’s ashes watched a hill rise up on the plain from the same perspective, watched the landscape of his hometown recede by the window, and watched the two big trees of his ninth uncle’s house from far and near.
On the 26th, after arriving at the old village, Luo Xuan went ahead to the cemetery where the clan is located. The cemetery is behind a factory building, where there was once a bamboo forest, where Luo Xuan played when he was young.
Red candles, paper money, whole chickens and wine cups were placed in front of the grave, and Luo Xuan, wearing a black umbrella and holding a heavy urn, chewed on the farewell with his father. On the same day, Luo Xuan’s third uncle’s grave was also moved to this place. The uncles and aunts talked sparingly about the day and laughed when they burned a paper-made two-story villa, saying, “Let them divide it among themselves.” Luo Xuan and her husband became the out-of-place grievers in that time and space.
With Luo Xuan, her husband and Uncle Nine each backhandedly scattering three handfuls of earth, Luo Xuan’s father truly returned to his roots. A plate of firecrackers with a diameter of half a person’s height emitted a loud noise, a burst of smoke finally blurred Luo Xuan’s eyes.
Disappear
In the 1990s, Luo Xuan family finally moved to the parents’ current residence. The family was happy for a long time at that time. Before that, they had moved several times, and the last time they lived in the rented place of the circuit board factory where their mother worked.
It was a large classroom, tables and chairs took up a quarter of the space, and when it rained the eaves leaked, so they always had to take the furniture out to dry when it was sunny.
When the car drove into the new residence, Luo Xuan’s mother’s heart was half cold. Even though it is the first sizeable district in the area, the surrounding area is full of dirt slopes and is desolate, in contrast to the previous residence adjacent to Hanzheng Street.
Today, because of the dense distribution of provincial institutions, sitting on a number of prestigious schools in Wuhan, this place is already an inch of Gold. But Luo Xuan’s mother still has a lot to say about the house, not only because it is small, but also because the building’s orientation causes the sunlight to be scarce and makes every winter freezing.
When my father was alive, the family bought a large and sunny house in the distant city of Wuhan. Before decorating and moving in, Luo Xuan’s father left first.
Luo Xuan proposed to sell the current house, the mother firmly refused. She did not want to leave the house again. When Luo Xuan reminded by relatives, to the mother proposed to write their own name when transferring, to avoid the trouble of transferring from the mother to her again later, the mother suddenly emotional, questioned Luo Xuan, “I even have a place to bend? Do you even take away the place where I sleep? “
A few days after proposing the property transfer, Luo Xuan’s mother sent a weibo, saying that she thought too much, when the replacement passbook are a lot of trouble, the property really should write Luo Xuan’s name, can save a lot of trouble.
But a few days later, sitting in the Housing Authority lobby, Luo Xuan’s mother looked at the notary certificate again collapsed. She asked Luo Xuan in a trance: “This is to say, the real estate certificate will only write your name? “Luo Xuan froze and nodded mechanically. Mom immediately erupted, shouted in the hall, “You are too cruel, right? Even I, the only place an old woman lives, want to take over? Do I live on the street in the future? “
Luo Xuan immediately relieved her mother, saying that if she could not write two names, she would not do it. To the window, the staff told the mother and daughter, can write their names at the same time. After the matter, the mother relaxed, a relaxed face told Luo Xuan, “you forget, when the notary said you can write two names”.
After the property transfer, Luo Xuan had to face the last formalities of her father’s departure – the cancellation of the account.
Previously, she was always trapped in a complicated formalities and processes related to the death of her father, this moment, she suddenly realized the meaning behind these trivialities, they dissipate the energy of the living in this way, but also to weaken the sadness, and through this specific thing to let the living and the departed have the last real connection.
It’s a long goodbye. And going to the police station to cancel the account means the real disappearance of the living. So, this year, although Luo Xuan received numerous calls from the police station urging her to cancel the account, she still repeatedly found reasons to choose to postpone.
Dealing with bank cards, handling funeral matters, replacing property belonging to …… everything is over, there is no reason to delay any longer.
On December 28, 2020, Luo Xuan finally walked into the police station with her account book and her father’s ID card. All the process was so much simpler than she thought, and after just a few minutes, the formalities were completed.
On the account book, the father’s page is still there, but stamped with a “cancellation” stamp. Luo Xuan opened her phone to search, but her father’s social security information was no longer available that day.
Father really disappeared.
What is death
From the time her father began to seek medical treatment to his eventual death, the virus called “new crown” took only 25 days to take away the life of the man who had been with her for more than 30 years.
She was obsessed with watching movies and documentaries about the epidemic for no other reason than to know what her father was facing alone in the hospital during the 16 days he was separated from them. She wrote long paragraphs of words in her qq space and diary, just to let her life and past freeze in another way.
It was as if there were two selves inside her. One of them goes to work, drops off the baby, leaves work, picks up the baby as usual, optimistic and cheerful, while the other one stops somewhere forever, unable to suppress her emotions when she thinks of her father, as if everything is in a dream. She doesn’t understand why her father has become a “diagnosed number” when there are so many people walking on the street, so many fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. A small part of the data.
On December 5, Mr. and Mrs. Luo Xuan took their daughter to Wuhan Central South Hospital to see a doctor. The car drove smoothly ahead, but Luo Xuan’s sobs grew from small to large. At the end, she just murmured to her husband, “Dad also walked this road to the hospital at that time, ah”. In fact, because she had to take care of the children, her father was always accompanied by her husband and mother on his way to the hospital. The last time she saw her father was forever on New Year’s Eve 2020. In the picture, her father was standing on a shelf wearing a mask to check the electric gate, and her two grandchildren were calling out to him “Grandpa, Grandpa” around the iron frame.
She had searched her heart and soul to think “what is the most touching thing about her father? “, but to no avail. Later, she suddenly remembered that when she was in elementary school, she couldn’t sleep because of a cold and nasal congestion, and her father gave her nose and head massage every day until she recovered from the cold, and she kept it up for almost a year.
Apart from this conspicuous incident, her life with her father was surprisingly that uneventful, and she could not find more examples of father-daughter bonding.
But in her parents’ home and her small home, a common and unexceptional furnishings provide a silent but powerful testimony of her father’s presence. The closet, cupboard, shoe cupboard of the parents’ home are built by the father’s own hands, the spacious workbench of Luo Xuan’s home cost Luo Xuan’s father two months’ time, for which he carefully built two storage cabinets, pushing the bicycle to make a trip from his home pack to Luo Xuan’s home. There is also the balcony iron frame on the morning glory pepper, to today still release the bright vitality.
One evening, Luo Xuan’s mother in the kitchen picking vegetables, Luo Xuan leaned against the door. Mom told Luo Xuan, and recently turned out the father’s two passbooks, and then, she suddenly said, “the couple’s fate is set in a previous life, is a few years on a few years, fate to, there are only two results, either divorce, or the death of one side. “Finished, they are a long time speechless.
The year is coming to an end, New Year’s Eve is getting closer and closer. Because this year is Luo Xuan’s father’s “New Year”, according to tradition they can not go to other families during the Spring Festival to pay their respects. However, a family of five New Year’s dinner was also refused by Luo Xuan’s mother. This Chinese New Year, Luo Xuan has nothing to look forward to.
She will not be able to taste her father’s famous white chopped chicken and diced pork, and the big dumplings that he must wrap for the Chinese New Year, nor will she be able to experience the “reunion”. On February 21, 2020, when she learned of her father’s death, Luo Xuan was lying in bed with her children. Hearing her sobbing, her son asked her, “What happened to grandpa? She choked up and whispered four words: Grandpa died. The young daughter continued to ask, “Where did grandpa go? She cried uncontrollably, unable to speak again. (Luo Xuan is a pseudonym in the article)
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