Grateful to Parents 65 Heartfelt Stories of Fatherly and Motherly Love

Author: Shi Gang
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. The more I read, the more I want to read. I can't get into other books. This is what they call 'never tiring of reading it a hundred times.'" I was puzzled that my father was only interested in one book, but then I thought, isn't there a saying in folk wisdom 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.
My 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 happily killed the three hundred-plus-pound fat pig we raised at home, and the whole village came to our house for 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 thing my father loved to hear the most was: "Your family has produced four college students."
Last winter, I suddenly received a phone 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 face as pale as paper, an IV in his arm, an oxygen tube in his nose, and his eyes tightly closed. Seeing my father 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, the flame flickered and struggled to keep burning until it finally died out. Only then did he reluctantly close the book. My father was like a lamp that had been drained of oil, and the time he had left in this world would not be long. My tears fell like pearls from a broken string, unstoppable.
My 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 he wanted to say something, but no sound came out. I leaned down and pressed my ear close to my father's mouth. My father no longer had 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 among them, so that copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms is yours."
I watched every word my father spoke, and it was incredibly difficult for him. I leaned close to his ear and said, "You're tired. Rest for a while and then we can talk." At 1 a.m., my father suddenly woke up. When he opened his eyes and saw me guarding his side, his eyes shone with light. My 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.
My father's illness was not as serious as what my sister had said over the phone. I had no idea that this was my father's final moments. With his calloused hands, my father tightly gripped my hand and said, "That copy of Dream of the Red Chamber you borrowed for me that year, I didn't dislike it. I just couldn't read it because I couldn't recognize the characters." P16