My uncle passed away at 2:40 pm on the last day of November at the age of 83.
During lunch, my mother received a call from my eldest cousin, saying that after my uncle was sent to the hospital, the doctor’s opinion was that there was no need for treatment. My mother judged that my uncle might not survive this time, so I told my mother: "You don't have to go back. I will do nucleic acid testing right away. I will go back to see my uncle tomorrow. If he is okay, I will go back and see him. If he really doesn't survive, I will Go back and see your uncle for the last time." After that, I lay on the bed and took a nap according to my own schedule. My mother's cry woke me up. I knew that my uncle was gone. On the last day of November, at 2:40 in the afternoon. Ten, died at the age of 83.
01 My uncle passed away, but my aunt did not cry
How can I not shed tears when parting between life and death? My sister called me and asked me to persuade my mother not to go back. She was worried that her mother could not bear the grief of her uncle's death. She repeatedly told her mother "don't cry" on the phone, and her mother wanted to see her uncle for the last time no matter what. I believe Tears can relieve pain. I would rather my mother cry freely and say goodbye to my uncle with a crying ceremony. No matter what kind of farewell, it is sad without ceremony.
I shed tears because I miss you, I shed tears because I regret it, and I shed tears because I lost an era...
I regret it When my eldest cousin called my mother, I didn't let her take the phone to video chat with my uncle. At least, I should have asked my eldest cousin to tell my uncle that I was going back and let my uncle know how much I cared about him. I had thought about it, but I was worried that my uncle was sensitive. I went back because it was not the New Year or the festival, so I didn't say anything out loud because I knew he was dying. No matter how much I believe in the existence of souls, I hope that my uncle will leave with my love for him.
However, I am more worried about my aunt. No matter what the situation is, my aunt makes people feel distressed: when my uncle is here, I worry that my aunt is too hard, and when my uncle is gone, I worry that my aunt is too lonely. . I didn't know how sad and howling my thin aunt would be. When my uncle passed away a few years ago, I didn't go home because I was too busy at work. My mother said that my aunt, who was rarely sad, cried so much that I couldn't imagine what it would be like for a couple who had lived together for nearly 60 years. It’s hard to leave, it’s so painful that I don’t want to live.
But when my mother and I sat in the car all day to cry in front of my uncle’s coffin, my aunt came out and said to me: "Liangyu, don’t cry! You My uncle passed away peacefully."
There is an old saying: There is no dutiful son in bed. There have always been filial sons in front of my uncle's bed. However, these "filial sons" did not serve my uncle very much. It was my aunt who always served my uncle.
Eight years ago, my uncle was lying in bed due to a stroke. During this period, he had a gallstone operation. I have lost count of the number of times I went to the hospital. Almost every time He recovered from his dying breath, and his entire life was taken care of by his aunt.
My aunt is not in good health. Although she is six years younger than my uncle, the hospital diagnosed her with diabetes, cancer, and synovitis of her kneecaps. For a while, my aunt used a A small bench with crutches to support your body. Although the twins' cousins ??are not far from their parents' home and they come back often, it is always their aunt who takes care of their uncle's daily life.
Regardless of spring, summer, autumn or winter, my aunt scrubs my uncle's body every day, feeds him, helps him from bed to wheelchair, and from wheelchair to bed. In addition, whether she originally lived with her cousin and sister-in-law, or later lived with her cousin, her aunt never asked anyone to help her when taking care of her uncle. She also had to wash, cook, clean, and take care of the vegetable garden. For eight years, I never got bored.
Even the doctors and nurses at the hospital lamented that an old man from the countryside had been lying in bed for several years without any odor. Even professional nurses could hardly take care of him so thoughtfully. My aunt said: "I only have one wish, that is, your uncle will walk in front of me. If I die in front of him, no one will be able to take care of him."
We all lamented that my aunt How can my body endure so many illnesses and such heavy physical exertion? My aunt herself is very calm. She said that what the doctor said is very scary. I never think about these things. Many diseases are caused by scaring myself. As for life and death, her aunt seems to take it very lightly. Maybe her uncle's departure before her just fulfilled her wish, so we can't see her sadness.
On December 3, at 4 o'clock in the morning, the Taoist priests started chanting sutras. Apart from asking for money from filial sons, I strained my ears and couldn't hear even a single sentence of the lyrics. The funeral was held at 5:18, and dozens of cars followed my uncle's hearse. I didn't know if anyone was accompanying my aunt. I looked back at her, and she was still as calm as before, watching her uncle's coffin leave without shedding a tear.
02 Uncle, there is nothing but a lot of people
2016 Spring Festival
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In fact, it is difficult for me to use words such as "contribution", "hardworking" and "kindness" to describe my uncle. My uncle has no special contribution in the entire big family. Even if he is planting rice in the fields, He was also polite, spotless, and unhurried. He even looked a little cold.
If I had to use one word to describe my uncle's fate, it would be "human". I often tell people that my uncle’s house doesn’t have a lot of anything, it just has a lot of people.
My uncle has seven children, one son and six daughters. Because the uncle has fourteen children from these seven children; in the era of only children, only the eldest cousin has two children, and the uncle has eight grandchildren, four of whom are already married, so the uncle's grandchildren have Twelve were born; now all the grandchildren who have married have given their uncle a great-grandson, and there are five great-grandchildren. In this way, the number of descendants reproduced by the uncle is thirty-one.
But more than that, our family belongs to a "matrilineal family", with my grandmother as the core family. My uncle's three sisters are my aunt, my mother and my aunt* ** gave birth to seven children, and these seven nephews also formed a quite large lineup, all of which also revolved around the uncle.
Not only that, the uncle’s status in the family seems to be established not only by the children of grandpa and grandma, but also by the two major branches of grandma’s family: one is grandma’s My elder brother is my uncle. When he was young, my uncle drove a ferry on the Yangtze River and gave birth to two sons and one daughter. My uncle died in a ship fire. He has at least fifteen grandchildren, including my mother. I don’t remember very clearly; the other sister who is my grandmother is my great-aunt. Because during the war, my great-aunt went out to serve as a soldier when he was very young and his whereabouts are unknown. My great-aunt waited for half a life with her only daughter, who gave her six grandchildren. . These two branches are both at Shishou, across the river from us.
When I was a kid, I would often visit my mother’s cousins’ house. I also saw my uncle and aunt bring their children to visit my grandma’s house. That kind of thing. The method seems to have some kind of prescriptive ritual. It is not necessarily a New Year celebration, but taking a period of time to stay at a relative's house during the off-season every year. We call it "visiting relatives".
The feeling of "visiting relatives" is great. I like the fresh family relationship where my aunt and grandma bring my cousins ??to live with me. They are very similar. My cousins, cousins, and cousins ??are all good-looking. That half-baked feeling always makes me hope to perform better in front of them and capture some of their beautiful memories.
What impressed us most about our uncle was that he always brought us delicious fried dough sticks every time he came. He asked us to sit down and distribute them one by one. It has been a long time, and I still vaguely remember my uncle’s voice and expression. I believe that all of us sitting at the table were swallowing our saliva while waiting for my uncle to distribute the fried dough sticks. I remember that every time my uncle would stare at me and call my mother's name "Xiaodong", I would be a little shy and say: "I am not Xiaodong." Then my uncle would say with satisfaction: "I think you are just like Xiaodong." From that time on, I knew very clearly that because I looked so much like my mother, I was loved by my grandmother’s relatives, including my uncle.
Relatives usually go to grandma’s house. As long as relatives come, we will all gather there. At that time, people could still be counted, but I guess every time before relatives went out, they had to figure out how much they needed to bring with them to distribute. Usually, food was the main thing, and the feeling of everyone eating together was very good. The taste is also a standard part of "visiting relatives".
The years are long and the sea has changed. We, the descendants, have all left our hometowns one by one and traveled to various places to make a living. We have become guests traveling from north to south in this world. Maybe someday we will meet each other on the road and we may not recognize each other. We are all so busy. We are so busy that we no longer have time to visit relatives. We are so busy that we can’t remember the last time our relatives came to live with us. We are so busy that we can’t remember that there are so many relatives in the world. We are so busy that we have nothing to do. Climb the Three Treasures Hall.
However, no matter how the world changes, I always have to go to my uncle’s house, and I can’t explain why I go. It seems to be a habit from generation to generation, from uncle to uncle. , to cousins, from aunts to aunts, to cousins ??and cousins; from cousins, cousins, cousins ??to cousins... Generation after generation, there are always people coming to "visit relatives" from the uncle's family.
It seems that as long as uncle is around, the clan connection in grandma’s family will not be interrupted. A world that seems to have never been turbulent and carries the old days will always exist. As long as you see uncle, you will feel Can feel the warmth of those old days. As long as I asked about the names, ages, experiences and various relationships of those relatives, my mother said that no one except my uncle could figure it out.
Those old days had nothing to do with wealth or poverty, gains and losses, honor or disgrace. They were a natural existence that existed because of my uncle. So, when my uncle passed away, I felt a sense of loss that the world had been taken away by him.
03? My uncle never worries, everything is “up to you”
I really can’t say that my uncle has No matter how hardworking he is or how much he cares about his children, he has been someone who has been pampered by others almost all his life. When he was a child, he was the only male among the four brothers and sisters. My grandpa treated them equally, but my grandma and grandma's mother were particularly patriarchal. As a girl, he never let his uncle work; when his uncle came of age, his grandparents would help him take care of the children, so he hardly had to worry about it; after his grandparents passed away, there were three younger sisters, especially his aunt, who cared very much about his uncle and were often taken to the city to visit him. When he got really old and sick, not only did his aunt take care of him, but his cousins ??often went back, and even his seven nephews went back to visit him and his aunt every year.
Calculated, the one who has contributed the most to the family with grandma as the core is my aunt. She likes to worry, and she is the only person in their generation who has left the countryside. She is eager to Pulling us out one by one, several of our cousins ??have lived and grown up in my aunt's house. My aunt is like a bridge for us from the countryside to the city; my mother is probably the most considerate among the sisters. One, and despite the hardships, she is strong and unyielding, becoming a protective umbrella for her children and nieces and nephews. Therefore, my cousins ??also like to be with my mother; my aunt likes us. She is relatively weak and does not speak much, but her aunt's gentleness is the greatest We were very tolerant, and we never had to say hello when we went to eat, drink, or have sex at our aunt's house. This was because my uncle was the team leader when he was young and was very popular in the village. No one dared to bully us. My uncle was always calm and could not say anything special about this big family. Contribution, but relatives near and far would surround him, which seemed a bit puzzling.
My uncle went to a private school and went to school after liberation. He wrote beautiful pen calligraphy and loved listening to books and operas. He also told me that in all Among the operas, Peking Opera has the most concise words. He is the accountant of our village. He is a cultural person after all, but he never seems to express opinions on too many things. He also seems to "do whatever you want" about things at home.
Including two children who died in infancy, my uncle gave birth to nine children, but he never even named the children. Coincidentally, the uncle's The third child was the same age as the third child in our family, so my sister called her "Third Son". Then, the fourth and fifth children in my uncle's family were called "Fourth Son" and "Fifth Son". The last set of twins was born when my uncle was 37 years old. If you are born on your birthday (September 17 on the lunar calendar), you don’t need to give a name. All are numbers: Sixth Son, Seventh Son.
Almost all the scientific names of the children at home are given by their mother and aunt, and my uncle neither worries nor interferes. It was only when I was 7 years old and in elementary school that my uncle asked me to give my cousin a scientific name. This was his only "interference" in the child's name. What happened was this:
Because we didn’t want to take my father’s surname as Li, we needed a scientific name that was like my grandma’s surname Zheng. According to the names of my uncle, my mother’s generation, and my eldest cousin, our family chose the surname of my grandma’s family, my grandpa’s family’s surname, and my eldest cousin’s name. Zheng Xianjun was named by my mother. I thought it sounded good, so I asked my eldest cousin, "I want the name my mother gave me." My mother said: "You can't give the name that my sister has already given to others. Let me give you another name." When naming myself, I thought the word "Ling" sounded nice and had a good meaning, so I named myself "Zheng Xianling". My cousin happened to be one year younger than me, because that day there happened to be a primary school in the village, and it was right in front of my uncle's house, so my cousin planned to go to school with me. My uncle said, "You might as well give your sister's name." Because there was no such thing. I went to kindergarten and never learned Pinyin. All the words I knew had dialect pronunciations, so I named my cousin "Zheng Xianqiong (our dialect pronunciation of 'group')" based on the radical and pronunciation of my own name.
My uncle’s only son’s real surname was “Zhao”. My sister was the same age as him. When they were in school, “popular and professional” names were in fashion, so my aunt We named them "Yongzhong" and "Yonghong" respectively; the following four, five, six and seven were not named after us. By the time they went to school, single names were fashionable across the country, and it was fashionable for girls to have boys' names, except for In addition to the fifth son taking his grandfather's surname and having a girl's name, the other four sons, the sixth son, and the seventh son all had single names: Zheng Zhou, Zheng Zhi, and Zheng Yi.
It seems that only our mother and aunt worry about how we should go in life. They will encourage us to study and find us jobs. My uncle cares about our seven children and seven nephews. Not much to worry about. At that time, our teaching conditions were not good, so my cousins, younger cousins, and younger cousins ??almost just let nature take its course when they started studying or gave up school.
I don’t know if this matter has something to do with my mother. Among the four siblings, my mother read the most and suffered the most. My uncle seems to be right about this. None of the seven children in my uncle's family have studied and escaped from the countryside. Now they all have happy families and have no worries about food and clothing.
My uncle doesn’t seem to object to me lying about studying in school. When people praise me in front of him, “Are you still a college student?” he will proudly say: "Well, this is the only college student in our family!" He seemed to know that I would suffer a lot after leaving my hometown. He told me very early on: "People come to this world to suffer. Look, everyone's face In fact, the word "ku" is written on it. The eyebrows are the beginning of the word "grass", the bridge of the nose is the center of support, and the mouth is the word "口" under the word "ku". p> My uncle never worried. During the eight years when my uncle was lying in bed, the greatest meaning of his life was to passively wait for news about his children and grandchildren: which grandson graduated from college, which grandson got a job, which grandson had a partner, here Sun Mantang, there are always too many things. When the eldest grandson gets married, he waits for the next one. When the eldest great-grandson is born, he waits for the next great-grandchild... When a person has no mobility, the only meaning of life is It's love.
04? My uncle’s gaze is my “original family”
Once I was chatting with a psychological counselor. She pointed out that there are flaws in my character caused by my "original family": "You always seem to want to conquer handsome and indifferent people. Is it related to your original family and your father?"
The "handsome and cold" person I thought of within a second when I lowered my head was not my father, but my uncle. Because when I was five years old, my father was persecuted and was forced to leave us. Moreover, my father was not very handsome.
My uncle is handsome. My uncle is about 175 years old, with thick eyebrows, big eyes, a straight nose, a thin face, clean skin, and the face of a scholar. My mother said that my uncle looked like an actor when he got married. Some people who went out of town would sigh that he was good-looking. Many years later, I met a middle school classmate in Beijing. He also said: Your uncle is really good-looking. It wasn't until my uncle passed away that I met my uncle's sister-in-law, whom I had met decades ago, and she complimented me on how good-looking my brother-in-law was. It's a pity that my uncle doesn't have a photo of his youth. 18 years ago, when my mother returned to her hometown, I took a group photo of my uncle, aunt, uncle, aunt, and my mother. By then, my uncle was already old.
My uncle is cold and taciturn. My uncle grew up in the countryside and has experienced anxious times and crazy times, but he is rarely excited. In my memory, he is calm at all times, even when he speaks when he is angry, he is calm. of.
The uncle's first marriage was the same as that of Li Mangeng and Hu Yuyin in "Furong Town". Because the former aunt was the daughter of a landlord, the organization forced the uncle to divorce. My uncle did not join the Party in the end, and he never complained. Later, when my father was criticized and persecuted, my grandmother and mother burst into tears, but my uncle was very calm.
When our family built a house, the bricks rolled by my mother were soaked in water by the continuous rain. Several girls in the village used drainage lifts to help my mother drain the water. My uncle found a pedal to drain the water. car and then left.
On a windy and rainy day, the weather was as terrible as a disaster movie. Even trees as thick as a bowl were uprooted. My mother told us, "As long as we hear the sound of the house, You just run out."
When the rain became lighter, my uncle stood in front of us wearing a raincoat. He said slowly: "It hasn't fallen yet?"
Once, my mother helped my aunt follow the rain. A female commune member got into a fight. Seeing that she was wronged and unable to fight, the female commune member cried and scolded her mother. Her brother dragged a shovel and was ready to help. His uncle suddenly appeared and only asked him: "What did you do first?" "The young man stopped.
Another time I was picking day lilies with many people in an open field. The short man Zhifang from the village dragged a shovel and said in a lively manner that day lilies were green manure. I was running around in a hurry, but I was the only one who didn't move, so he snatched my basket, and I followed behind. I met Zhao Yunhua, who was a bit powerful in the village. Zhao Yunhua said to Zhifang Chaozi: "Take the basket off for her." !" I thought to myself: It's over, this vicious guy! At this moment, a voice came from the west side of the field: "What's going on?" It turned out to be his uncle falling from the sky. Zhao Yunhua immediately said to Zhifang Chaozi: "Hurry up and return the basket to her!"
p>My uncle was always so calm, and his cold eyes seemed to contain some mysterious majesty. He always resolves difficulties with indifferent words. Even if he is powerless, he will not get angry. Even if there is something really happy, he will not be overjoyed.
However, I grew up under the watchful eyes of my uncle. I have remembered those eyes staring at me since I can remember. They were not harsh, not gentle, nor melancholy. , it’s not sympathy, it’s love! There is a special warmth in my uncle's eyes. When a group of us children come and go, those eyes always follow me and make me feel happy under his gaze. Even once I refused to take my sister with me and my uncle threatened to throw me into the water and stabbed me with needles in his arms, I still felt the power of love in his trembling hands.
Once, my uncle was hospitalized and arrived in the intensive care unit. Several of us went to the intensive care unit to talk to him. Later, my mother wanted to know if my uncle was awake, so she asked He: "Can you remember which ones talked to you in the intensive care unit?" My uncle said, "Liangyu." My mother said that my uncle was partial to me, and even the cousins ??of the twins were interested because six of them looked like me. And he was even more favored by his uncle.
The last time I saw my uncle was during the May Day holiday this year. My mother followed my aunt into my uncle's room first. He was calm when he saw my mother. Then I walked in and called "Uncle." "(Because my mother stayed with my grandparents, I called my uncle "Uncle" since I was a child). Tears flowed out of my uncle's eyes instantly. He tried hard to raise his head and called me in a trembling voice: "Liangyu!"
However, my uncle has closed his eyes forever. Those eyes that have been watching me can no longer follow me..., no, no, no , maybe it’s not like this, maybe my uncle’s loving eyes are still staring at me somewhere. The second night after returning home, I saw my uncle in my dream, wearing a white shirt and a light gray pair of ankle-length shoes. pants, walking towards me from the mist...