Grandpa is gone

1

When my grandfather was alive, I often dreamed that he was dead, and after he died, I often dreamed that he was still alive.

That night, he smoked his cigarette and said to me, I am going to Benxi. Do you want to come with me? I said what are you going to do? He said, go find my brother.

In the early days of New China, his brother escaped from famine and went to the Northeast. By some random coincidence, he became the secretary of the Benxi Steel Plant. He was so famous that the whole village knew that he had become a high-ranking official in the Northeast. . However, when his mother passed away, there was a large-scale steel smelting in China. As a steel city, Benxi was the first to bear the brunt, so he did not come back for the funeral, and he became an unfilial son in the eyes of the whole village.

I said, your brother has been dead for more than 20 years. You can’t find him in Benxi. His two sons, one immigrated to Germany and the other immigrated to Japan, are no longer in Benxi. He was deaf and I was loud. He said, it's okay, I'm dead too, and then I suddenly realized that he was also dead.

I always wake up from dreams like this, afraid that I am in the same world as him, afraid that I will die too. In countless strange dreams, he talked to me, saying things he had not had time to say before he was alive. He died too hastily, there were many things he didn't have time to say, and no one was willing to listen to him.

There were no signs before his death, so our family didn’t even know when he left. During that time, my father had moved to a newly built building, and my grandfather still had an old house in the old village. It was surrounded by demolished ruins, covered with pumpkin vines, and there were several others who were not qualified to live there like him. The old man who went upstairs, and a few chickens who couldn't move upstairs.

My father said that when he went to his grandfather’s house that day, he felt something bad when he opened the door of the main room, because his grandfather liked to get up early and always put on the stove, boil some water and make a cup of tea, but the room was cold that day. Yes, there is no trace of warmth.

My father walked into the back room and found grandpa sitting by the bed, with his arms propped on the old-fashioned blue-gray writing table beside the bed. He thought he was sitting and writing. Grandpa liked to write and was good at writing. . The father coughed, but there was no response. He called again, but there was still no response. My father walked over and touched his arm. He found that the man was already cold. He must have been walking for a while. As for when, he didn’t know. It may be that he didn’t sleep in the first half of the night and kept sitting, or he may have been up in the second half of the night. , and sat by the bed again until he died.

2

Grandpa is the "person who encourages death" in the village, and his death is a big deal in the village. In the past, he was responsible for everything. Those who were half-dead, he would always advise them to die and suffer the consequences themselves, and not to burden their families. For those who were already dead, he would advise them to leave peacefully and not to live again. Scared the family.

As for how my grandfather became the person in charge of white affairs, I don’t know. In my opinion, he should have a certain influence in the village. People who control the life and death of a village must have A certain ability. My grandfather was among the first batch of high school students in New China. High school at that time was much more expensive than a doctorate today. However, due to family background, he did not go to college, which became a lifelong regret for him.

My dad always said that he had no future. A dignified high school student of the same age as New China only worked as an administrator in the village. This became an excuse for my father to look down on him. As a result, I have never heard the word father from my father's mouth. To him, father is a strange word until he has me.

My grandfather has many classmates who have become high-ranking officials in the county, county magistrate, deputy secretary of the county party committee, director of the office, etc., not because they are better than my grandfather, but because they have good backgrounds and are poor. Lower-middle peasants have an inherent advantage. My grandfather was a landowner, so he not only lost the qualifications to go to university, but it also affected his career.

My grandfather once helped his classmates who came from relatively poor families, so those classmates who became high-ranking officials often came to see him. I like those days when his classmates come to visit, usually in early summer, when the cicadas don’t scream so arrogantly, the weather isn’t so hot, and there aren’t swarms of flies in the yard. They came to visit grandpa in cars, first Santana and Lao Hongqi, and later Passat and Audi.

The area outside our house was full of people, all wanting to see what valuable guests were coming to our house. Of course I was very proud and arrogant every time because I ate the White Rabbit toffee that they couldn’t eat. I even took a Polaroid. When I clicked the camera, the photo came out. I felt like It’s amazing, showing off photos everywhere.

Each time, my father would say, he also graduated from high school. Look at these people, they are all doing well. Look at your grandpa, who is just doing nothing. His biggest job is the party. Team leader. But for him, as a child of a landlord, joining the party has already cost him dozens of kilograms of pork, which is not a small amount, because although his family is classified as a landlord, his home has been confiscated and his life is very tight. . Grandpa told me that being an official means being an official, and serving the people means serving the people. No one can control the issue of fate.

When my grandfather was about sixty years old, his classmates never came again, and his expectations for each summer were reduced by half. The news that came out at first was that the county magistrate had contracted the disease of wealth and died before retiring. Later, the deputy secretary of the county party committee suddenly committed suicide due to a safety accident. The director of the office was promoted and went to the next county to become the deputy county magistrate, but he failed. Not long ago, he died in a car accident on the way to investigate.

In the end, none of them survived my grandfather.

Grandpa said that there are three thresholds for people, sixty-one, seventy-three, and eighty-four. If you live past eighty-four, you can live to be a hundred years old, which is unstoppable. I don't know if this is supported by probability statistics. In the days to come, I often hear these numbers. Maybe he has seen a lot of life and death, and he has concluded some rules.

3

My father is my grandfather’s eldest son. He seems to be separated from his grandfather and never speaks long words. My father held back his energy and worked hard step by step from being a private teacher to becoming the principal of a school district at the age of forty. Every step was not easy. My father did not go to college. During the Cultural Revolution, the college entrance examination was canceled and universities implemented a recommendation system. Of course, Because of the composition problem, my father also missed the opportunity to go to college. Two generations lost their dreams for the same reason, the label of a landlord, which further widened the gap between father and grandfather.

My father did not bow to fate. When he was six years old, his mother hanged herself, but he never stopped for a moment. The driving force that supported him was that he did not want to live a useless life like his grandfather.

My father became the principal, and my family donated some money, so we decided to buy a building in the city built with the school's funds. When I was ten years old, I left the village and moved to a building in the city, and I never came back to live there for a long time.

In the next ten years or so, I only came back during winter and summer vacations, but I never stayed overnight because I thought my grandfather’s house was dirty and messy. Then I was admitted to college and traveled far away from home. The times I came home to see him were even rarer. My hometown became a place I could never return to.

It wasn’t until I received the news of his death that I remembered him again. At that time, I had not been home for a long time. The pressure from work and family makes me, a wanderer working hard in a strange city, dare not slack off at all.

The call was from my father. He said, pack your luggage and come back quickly, with the same commanding tone. My father had never spoken like this before, and I had already heard something strange. What did I say? He said, your grandfather is dead. I didn't hear any emotion. Over the years, my father and grandpa rarely talked. It was my mother who took care of grandpa.

A few years ago, my grandfather got herpes zoster, and the pus-filled herpes covered his waist. At first, my mother went to the barefoot doctor in the village. The doctor said that if she was allergic, just apply some medicine and it would be fine. Thinking that it was getting worse, my mother insisted on applying medicine to my grandfather, but it had no effect. My father paid little attention to it and didn't ask anything.

4

I happened to go home at that time and saw that my grandfather’s condition was very serious. Herpes had torn scabs and covered his back. We took him to the county hospital, and the doctors were shocked by the situation. They had never seen such severe "snake sores" before.

As the saying goes, if "snake-spot sore" wraps around your waist, it cannot be saved. In those days, he was skinny, with high cheekbones and sunken eyes. He was in his eighties, hunched over on a hospital bed covered with white sheets, silent.

In the past, he liked to talk to me the most, and I was the only one who liked to listen to him. There was a kind of magical realism in his stories that deeply attracted me and became the material for my current writing. Before "Persuading Death and Enhancing Birth" is based on his story prototype. In addition, he also took me to participate in various white events, of course not to let me inherit his career, but there were all kinds of delicious food at the white events. Grandpa took me to the kitchen, and they cried sadly outside. , I ate happily inside.

I said, Grandpa, please say something. He said, thank you Xiaofei for bringing me to the hospital. After hearing this, I suddenly wanted to cry. A word of thanks made the distance between us become far away. The grandfather who loved me suddenly disappeared, and even his outline became blurred.

He lay there bent, unable to straighten, and had never straightened. During the Great Leap Forward, three ribs on both sides of his abdomen were broken by a truck, and they were attached to the liver, gall bladder, and spleen and stomach. They were just a hair away from death. He did not receive treatment, but had a few centimeters patched up, rested for a month, and went back to work. However, the lack of rib support and constant bending deformed the spine. From then on, in his thirties, he never stood upright again, just like the rest of his life.

At night, I was watching in the hospital, and I seemed to see the huge shadow of death approaching, covering the entire ward. But there is also a tenacious temperament that is also displayed in this aging body. It is optimism shaped by a difficult fate, and it is also an open-mindedness that is accustomed to life and death. It tells us that the person in front of us will not give in easily, even to death.

A few weeks later, grandpa finally got over it. When he was discharged from the hospital, I had already left. I called my mother and asked about his situation from time to time. My mother always reported good news but not bad news, saying that everything was fine. Don't worry. But I know how terrible the sequelae of herpes zoster are. A doctor classmate of mine said that the sequelae of this disease are like ten thousand ants biting your nerves, but you can’t see them. Many people can’t hold on. They all chose suicide.

I don’t know how he survived these three years. He survived spring, summer, autumn and winter one after another, with ten thousand ants eating his body every day. He never even told his father. , how uncomfortable and painful he was, and needed comfort from his son, so he just asked his mother for some painkillers. He also grew poppies, which may have come in handy during those difficult days.

It took him three years to persuade himself to face death bravely. Just like everyone he persuaded, there is only endless pain in this world, and leaving this world is only a moment. When he died, he was like a statue, like an Arhat in Buddhism or a saint in Christianity. He sat on the edge of the bed, freezing the pain at that moment forever, but he was free and went to a world without pain.

I sat on the green leather car going home and traveled through the entire Shandong Province, from the humid Pacific coastal cities to the dry Taishan Mountains. Every time the sound of the train hitting the rails made me feel... As time goes by, it becomes the scenery along the way and the memories of life.

I know that the place called hometown can never go back. The man I call grandpa will always live in my heart.