Grateful to Parents - 65 Heartfelt Stories of Fatherly and Motherly Love

Author: Teng Gang / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: I remember the winter of my senior year in high school in the county. I borrowed a copy of Dream of the Red Chamber from a classmate to let my father read. When my father took it in his hands, he carefully flipped through a few pages and said, "I'm so engrossed in Romance of the Three Kingdoms that after reading it once, I still want to read it again and again. I can't get into other books. This is what they call 'never tiring of reading.'" I had about why my father was only interested in one book, but then I thought, isn't there a saying in the folk that goes, "Old people shouldn't read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and young people shouldn't read Water Margin"? Maybe my father was just particularly captivated by Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Father was the kind of person who swallowed all his sorrows but showed his joy on his face. When my younger sister went to university in the autumn, even though half of her tuition was borrowed, my father still happily killed the three hundred-plus-pound fat pig we raised at home, and everyone in the village came to eat meat. That day, my father was so happy he acted like a child. I saw my father drink so much wine. When he was drunk, my father kept laughing, and that laughter came from the bottom of his heart. In his later years, the one thing my father loved to hear was, "You have four university students in your family."
Last winter, I suddenly received a call from my younger sister saying, "Father is seriously ill this time. He might not make it." After receiving my sister's call, I drove all night to the hospital. When I arrived, my father was lying in bed with a paper-white face, IVs in his arms, an oxygen tube in his nose, and his eyes tightly shut. Seeing him like this, I was reminded of a scene from when I was very young: my father holding a book, sitting by a kerosene lamp. The oil in the lamp had run out, but the flame flickered and stubbornly burned until it finally died out. Only then did he reluctantly close the book. Father was like a lamp whose oil had been completely drained, and the time he had left in this world would not be long. My tears fell like pearls from a broken string, unstoppable.
Father slowly opened his eyes and saw me standing by the bed. His eyes lit up. He opened his mouth a few times as if trying to say something, but no sound came out. I leaned down and pressed my ear close to his mouth. Father didn't even have the strength to speak, but he still managed to say in broken sentences, "Doggu, I didn't leave you anything valuable, but I left you a book. You are the eldest brother, so that Romance of the Three Kingdoms is yours."
I watched every word Father spoke with great difficulty. I leaned close to his ear and said, "You're tired. Rest for a while, and we can talk later." At 1 a.m., Father suddenly woke up. When he opened his eyes and saw me guarding him, his eyes shone with light. Father signaled for me to sit up. I quickly helped him sit up and placed a pillow behind his back. I noticed that his spirits were much better than during the day, and his face even had a faint redness.
Father's condition wasn't as serious as what my sister had said over the phone. I had no idea that this was Father's last light. With his calloused hands, Father tightly grasped mine and said, "That Dream of the Red Chamber you borrowed for me that year... I didn't hate reading it. I just couldn't read the characters." P16