There is a feeling called heartache

Chapter 16 My Blind Father
On the eve of my departure, I went to my father's grave and burned the Yueqin to him.When I was not at home, he had to play and sing by himself.

My father was congenitally blind. At the age of 13, he learned art from an old blind man for 10 years. Later, he ventured into the rivers and lakes by himself, sitting under the wall and doing horoscopes for others.When it comes to weddings and ceremonies, I go over with a Yueqin in my arms and sing some good words to praise people.Because my father can compose lyrics on the spot, he gets more "red envelopes" than other blind men every time.

My father married my mother when he was 23 years old.Mother is dumb.According to the old people, my mother was good-looking, with a cherry mouth, willow-leaf eyebrows, and a big braid over her chest.

The next year, I was born.

One day in April 1975, my father went to catch a wedding banquet, and when he was playing the Yueqin and was singing happily, suddenly a string of the Yueqin broke with a "boom".He was silent for a while, and cried with a "wow".On this day, my mother went to the mountain to cut firewood, but was bitten by a poisonous snake. She came back with great strength, and hurriedly took me from my grandmother to nurse me. After feeding, she fell to the ground and never got up again.

After my mother was buried, my father stayed at the grave for two days and two nights.In the middle of the second night, the villagers suddenly heard the sound of Yueqin and heart-piercing humming. It turned out that it was the father singing "Mourning Chrysanthemum".Ju'er is the mother's name.

As long as I can remember, my father would sit under the locust tree in front of the old house and play and sing "Mourning Chrysanthemum", until now I still remember some sentences in it: "Ju'er, you are so cruel, why did you leave me alone?
Blind man, I wish I could accompany you into the pit..."

Father is still doing his previous job.His specialty program is "Mourning the Chrysanthemum", but he doesn't perform it very often. When there is a funeral, he only sings a paragraph or two, and both the singer and the listener cry.

When I was about five years old, I started going out early and returning late to drink with my father, and I became his "eyes".People who hold weddings take special care of our father and son, and often send us the most delicious dishes, and they hang a lot of "red".

My father always treated me like a heart, but when I was 7 years old, he beat me hard.That year, I was old enough to go to school, but I refused to go to school.He was very kind at first, but who knew that I wouldn’t take it in, he got angry and told me to kneel on the ground, and then he hit me with a bamboo stick without thinking, and when he was tired, he hugged me in his arms In the middle of the night, he cried and said, "You want to beg for a lifetime like me? You don't need anything, and you want to be an upright man..."

Because of that fight, later, I studied hard and got good grades, but this didn’t change some of my classmates regarded me as “different”, they made up jingles to ridicule me: “My father is blind, my mother is dumb, and a son is a beggar… ..."

I couldn't bear it any longer. On the way home from school one day, I got the courage I didn't know where to pick up a small stick and rushed into a group of classmates, and slapped a child on the face fiercely.

That night, the family rushed to my house to ask the teacher about the crime. My usually timid father turned into a beast and threatened to fight him desperately.Seeing this posture, the other party walked away resentfully.I thought my father would settle accounts with me, but no, he took my hand and said, "You did the right thing! Vicious dog, if you don't give it a little color, it will bite you... But, sometimes you can I made a detour!" I remembered my father's words, and from then on, when I saw those classmates, I kept away from them.In this way, I finished elementary school and junior high school in a lonely environment, and was admitted to the high school in the county seat.The parents of the classmates in the class are either cadres in the county or bosses, but my father is a blind man who runs around the world with a Yueqin all day long. My father suddenly became a shame in my heart!

One day in the first semester of the first year of high school, I was in class when I suddenly saw my father outside the window, leaning on that annoying stick and carrying a big black snakeskin bag, leaning quietly on the railing in a trance. Look" in the direction of the classroom.I wanted to get up and go out several times, but stopped every time.

There was a murmur of whispering in the classroom. Obviously, many people saw my father. I really hope that a big hole will suddenly open in the ground and let me fall.I simply closed my eyes!Suddenly I heard the teacher call my name, I looked up, he just came in from the door, said to me very politely: "Your father is looking for you!"

I grabbed my father's bamboo stick and quickly fled to a remote place.I almost yelled at him and said, "What are you doing here?" While unloading the snakeskin bag, he said, "Today is your birthday, let me come to see you..." After finishing speaking, he put his hand on my face like before. Touched, tears flowed from the two deep eye holes.I roughly pushed his hand away: "What are you touching? What is this place!" My father said with a smile, "The child has grown up and is shy!" sliced, salted boiled peanuts.

I didn't care to listen to my father's nagging, and almost "pushed" him out of the campus.He asked me to eat a bowl of noodles, and I lied that I would have an exam in the next class, and he quickly said, "Then you go back quickly, you can't delay the exam." I was about to run away, but he stopped me again, trembling I took out a black cloth bag from my close-fitting pocket, took out neatly folded one and two pieces of change, and stuffed them into my hand.

I took the money and turned around and ran away. When I got to the school gate, I couldn't help but look back at my father. I saw him walking on the road with a bamboo stick.It was his first time to go to the county seat. I really don't know how he got into the school and how he will get back, but I turned my head cruelly and left.

In June 1992, one month later, I was going to take the college entrance examination, but my father died.

My father went to catch a drink that day. When he came back, the weather changed suddenly. It rained heavily, causing a mountain torrent. The bridge on a mountain stream not far from my house was washed away, and my father stepped on the air... The corpse was the second Tian found it in the river 10 kilometers away, and he was still clutching the yueqin in his hand.

Because of the sudden death of my father, I dropped out of school as a matter of course, and went to Shenzhen with a group of fellow villagers during the Spring Festival of 1993.On the eve of my departure, I went to my father's grave and burned the Yueqin to him.When I was not at home, he had to play and sing by himself.

After I came to Shenzhen, I seldom went home. I went back when my grandmother died. My father’s grave was about to collapse, so I refilled the soil and erected a monument.This year's Spring Festival, I took my wife and children back again, because the children can call "Grandpa".

(End of this chapter)