Farewell to father

Xia Xiaohong

Farewell is a heavy topic, often accompanied by sad scenes. The most unforgettable farewell in the world is the farewell of life and death. Maybe this is what people often say, except for life and death, everything else is trivial. I was very afraid of seeing the scene of life and death, and I couldn’t even imagine how I would feel once this happened to me. But often things don’t stop just because you are afraid of them. The thing I fear most comes after all...

All along, I have been thinking about how to use my clumsy brushstrokes to record my father’s ups and downs. A life of hard work and kindness. Originally, I had been writing the story of my second trip with my father intermittently these days. Unexpectedly, my father's sudden death made "Farewell My Father" appear in advance. The plot has to come to an end before the actors have even appeared, which is a tragedy in itself. "Farewell to My Father" is a small article of several thousand words, but I wrote it intermittently for a week. I wrote about letting go, laughing and crying. What was rolling in my mind were scenes of me and my father saying goodbye... This is not writing an article. , this is the memory of my father.

? I can’t remember how many times I said goodbye to my father. I saw him off, and he saw me off. We, father and son, walked in the process of welcoming and sending off. Half a century has passed. From the farewell at the school gate when my father carried me to school when I was a child, to the farewell at the gate of my home every time I returned home after the Spring Festival, to the farewell at the station when my father came home from Hangzhou... every scene is vivid in my mind and still in my ears. Although there was some reluctance and nostalgia in each farewell, fortunately, it was diluted by the joy of getting together next time, so that the farewell between my father and I was more or less mixed with elements of expectation and hope. As people often say, "Today's separation is for a better meeting tomorrow."

March in spring is the season with the most beautiful scenery among the four seasons, and it is also often the season with the most farewell scenes. I was planning to accompany my father on another trip during the rapeseed season, writing stories about him and taking photos of my father, but unexpectedly, a phone call from my brother suddenly made everything come to nothing and became a dream that could never be realized. When I came to my senses, I suddenly remembered that I should leave to see my father off. It's just that this time, I don't know where my father is going. I only know that I want to send the old man to a place far, far away.

"Although you are gone now, your words are still in my ears." On the way home from work, what always flashed before my eyes was the scene when I accompanied my father to Nanjing, Beijing, Luoyang, Xi'an, Suzhou, and Hangzhou last autumn to travel across 10 provinces and cities. His children were as happy as he was. The first time I took a plane and looked out the window, I felt so happy. I didn't feel that my father had passed away, as if I just went back to see his old man as usual. But when it was time to pack my luggage, I couldn't bear it any longer. In the past, every time I went home, I would search here and there to bring him something he liked to make him happy, but this time I found that I didn’t need to bring it, and no one wanted the things I brought back. You can't appreciate this feeling without experiencing it yourself. Father is really gone, and we have to rush back to see him off.

The last farewell to my father brought the half-century-long father-son relationship between me and my father to an abrupt end on March 10, 2020. God brought a great end to the life of my father, who was born in 1945. This end was like a high wall that separated my father and me from yin and yang. This period was drawn a bit hastily, so that it has always been a question mark and an exclamation mark in my heart. How I wish it could be a comma, but I know that is an unattainable wish. We originally agreed to go down together, but unexpectedly we broke up while walking. His old man no longer looked back at me from time to time like before, saying "Go back, go back," leaving me standing there alone and watching him go away...

My father walked too fast, Within a few minutes, when the ambulance arrived, my father's heartbeat had stopped. He came to this world in a hurry and left this world in a hurry. Just like the hurried way he walks, and the hurried way he works. When I drove more than 6 hours to get home, it was already past 12 o'clock in the night. Looking at my father lying on the soul board, I could no longer control myself and cried close to my father's face. My father's face and hands are cold and not as warm as when he touched me. He can no longer hear my cry or feel my tears... At this time, I feel guilty, self-blame, and regret. All of them came to my mind, and I felt how derelict I was and how helpless I was. Thinking about it, I have helped many people, but I couldn't save my own father.

My father passed away peacefully, as if he was asleep. There was no sign of pain, which made me feel slightly better. Neighbors said that leaving without pain was a result of past life practice. Indeed, compared to having to be rescued with tubes in the hospital ICU, I think it was honorable and lucky for my father to pass away like this. I believe that God sees my father’s kindness to others, sympathy for the weak, and helping those in need all his life. As the saying goes, good things come to good people. But my father, who was still alive in the video on the evening of the 9th, was lying peacefully on the coffin on the evening of the 10th. On the 11th, he would be living in a coffin, and on the 12th, only a box of ashes would be left. The old man left in a hurry without saying hello, which made it difficult for us to accept this cruel reality. We had to say a few words before leaving. I know that we can no longer keep up with the pace of my father's departure. Maybe he has no intention of letting us come to see him off...

Following my father's last wish, my father's funeral will be simple. Simple, solemn and decent, this is also our brother and sister’s wish. We always believe that filial piety should be spent where the money should be spent while the elderly are still alive, so that the elderly can eat well, drink well, play well and be in a good mood. "A person dies like a lamp going out." There is no point in fussing over things after death. My father's funeral was carried out simply and solemnly according to rural customs. I felt that every procedure in this custom was like a post station, and with each procedure, we sent my father to the next inn station. As the procedure progressed, my father became farther and farther away from us...

According to custom, I wiped my father's body and put on spiritual clothes. Because we had made an appointment to go to the municipal hospital for an in-patient check-up early on the 11th, this was also the day that my parents chose after considering the epidemic situation. They were closely guarded and separated, but they did not expect that the epidemic prevention and control would eventually delay my father's medical treatment. Whenever my father has important events or travels, he always tidies himself up. As usual, my father, who loves to be clean, took a bath on the afternoon of the 10th and put on the clothes we bought for him. He said that he had no place to take a bath when he was hospitalized. Unexpectedly, something happened soon after, and he had to take off his clothes as soon as he put them on. Did my father know that he was going to travel far away? Looking at my thin and motionless father, my tears came again. I remembered the scene when I took him on a trip to Luoyang last autumn. We stayed in a villa-style hotel that day. In order to relieve my father's fatigue, I filled the bathtub with water, let my father take a bath, and washed and dried the underwear that my father had changed. In my mind, this was the first time I washed clothes for my father, and now it has become the only time. My father said that that night was the deepest sleep he had ever had. I was so happy to hear that.

My father was lying peacefully without saying a word. My brother and I were keeping vigil next to him and talking about our father's past. We were thinking about his good things and our bad things, sometimes crying and sometimes laughing, until my father was buried at dawn. We cherished the time we spent with our father, and the brothers and sisters stayed up for three whole nights. Because we know that we don’t have much time to spend with our father like this. This is how we bid farewell to our father, even though he has gone far, far away. There are very few situations in my life where I don't blink all night long. Unless my workplace is working overtime or something big happens, I maintain the habit of going to bed early and getting up early. In addition to working overtime all night on the Lantern Festival for the Hangzhou Municipal Government to draft the "1+12" policy to support enterprises during the epidemic, the most recent time I stayed up all night happened four years ago. At that time, my mother was hospitalized in an emergency. When I rushed back late at night, my mother's condition gradually improved. My brother and I happily sat in front of the hospital bed and chatted with my mother all night long. The two scenes are so similar, except that at that time we were guarding a living mother, but today, we are guarding a father who has passed away. Same togetherness, different feelings.

Early on the morning of the 12th, the hearse arrived and we were about to send our father off. This was the most heartbreaking moment for us. My father is leaving home and will never come back. This is what we usually call life and death. We helped my father into the hearse amidst the sound of firecrackers and mournful music. The sound seemed particularly crisp and sad in the early morning. My father likes to get up early, so we get up early to see him off. Relatives, friends, and neighbors lined up in a long line to bid farewell to my father behind the hearse. Neighbors and my father’s former friends lit firecrackers and burned incense paper on both sides of the street early to see my father off. My brother and I held our father’s portrait in our arms. Kneel down and worship. The neighbors supported my brother and me, which was a kind of silent comfort, a kind of winter warmth, and a kind of simple nostalgia. We are all very grateful to them. When his father was alive, his presence was always indispensable in weddings and weddings in the neighborhood.

As the hearse moved forward slowly, my father was getting further and further away from the home he built with his own hands. The two-story house he built brick by brick witnessed his father's hardships during those difficult years, and those few The small farmhouse converted from an old house is a reflection of my father’s leisure life in his later years. Now, he left them to his beloved children and went to another habitat.

Due to epidemic prevention and control, only one or two relatives are allowed in the crematorium, and others can only wait in the parking lot. My brother and I went to say our final goodbyes to our father. Because it was faster than the scheduled time, when we arrived, my father's body had just been pushed into the cremator. We no longer cared about being afraid of the corpses on the hearse next to us. We just wanted to see our father for the last time. If we were usually Don't have the guts. Tears blurred my eyes, and I could no longer see my father who was burning. I just subconsciously held my hand on the wall of the cremation furnace and got as close to my father as possible. "Send you a thousand miles away, but you will eventually see each other again." We couldn't bear to watch it anymore, so we knelt down to see our father off. We can only send my father here, but this send-off means goodbye forever.

After about 40 minutes, the staff handed my father’s ashes wrapped in red cloth to my hands. I saw my father again, as if I were seeing him again after a long separation. I had the feeling of "holding hands and looking into each other's tearful eyes, speechless and choked." I instinctively pressed my face against the urn, just like when I was a child and snuggled into my father's arms. The urn was warm, it was my father's body temperature, but my father never reached out to hug me again, nor did he say anything to me. I held the urn in both hands and carefully got into the car, while my brother held his father's portrait. I held my father tightly in my arms, just like he held me when I was little. Tears fell on the red cloth, and I quickly wiped them away, fearing that I would wake up my sleeping father, and that my father would feel sad if he saw me. The car slowly drove out of the funeral home, and the cars of relatives and friends parked on the roadside also followed, and we took my father to the cemetery together.

When the hearse arrived at the cemetery, other relatives, friends, and neighbors were waiting early. Due to the time of burial, my father's ashes can only be temporarily stored in the cemetery until they are buried before the Qingming Festival. I gently placed my sleeping father on the table, just as he gently put me into the cradle while I was sleeping. Amidst the sound of firecrackers, we knelt down to bid farewell to my father. Thinking that he would be alone in this strange hut, my brother and I burst into tears. How could we be willing to leave our father alone?

"Weeping towards each other in the sky, what can the wind and dust expect?" In just a few days, a living father quietly disappeared. 75 years is just a short moment in the long river of history, but for my father, it has been a life of ups and downs, hard work, and struggle. He is always fighting against fate. Of the seventy-two professions in the world, he worked in more than thirty. This is a kind of helplessness, but also a kind of talent. Although he is not rich and powerful, he devoted his life to training us brothers and sisters. I think he is the winner in life. Because people are the greatest wealth. I feel that my father is like a spring silkworm. He has been spinning silk all his life and making cocoons all his life. He is a parent when he is young and a child when he is old. He will not be willing to grow old until the silk is finished spinning and the cocoon is ready... …Fortunately, my father’s life in his later years was still very happy. He had many children and grandchildren and lived a leisurely life. This somewhat made up for the shortcomings in the hearts of us younger generations.

We chose our father’s cemetery on Ancestral Tomb Hill, which is a turtle-shaped mountain. It was a cemetery specially built by the town government to demolish scattered ancestral tombs. Looking at the Turtle-shaped Mountain from a distance, there are densely packed stone monuments, which are the figures of relatives, they are gathering in another world. My father’s cemetery is not far from my grandparents, and the people sleeping next to him are my father’s relatives and elders in the clan. My father will be reunited with his parents and ancestors here. He will return to his parents and relatives who like him. 75 years ago, my father was with them when he came to this world, and now, he will be with them again. Is life really a reincarnation? My father is a mountain, and this time he has returned to the embrace of the mountain! Sleeping with his relatives, my father will not be lonely.

As the saying goes, when the leaves fall, they return to their roots, and they send their old age back to the mountains. Life is like a journey. For three days, we accompanied my father on his final journey. If we travel on weekdays, we can't go very far in three days, but in these three days, we sent my father to a place far, far away. I don't know what that place is called, I just know that people say it is paradise; I don't know how far it is, I just know that my father's back can't be seen.

Father, have you arrived? Have you settled in? Is it cold there? Is there anyone to help you with washing and cooking? Although my father did not tell me, I believe that my father will live well in another world!

Fireworks In the early morning of March, the sun rose as usual, but the mountain was missing...