There is a feeling called heartache

Chapter 24 A Father Who Lived the Hardest
He knew that the sea of ​​suffering was boundless, but he silently waited for more bitter days.

In the 60s, he was a political "defect" (he wore a rightist hat during the anti-rightist movement in 60), but he wanted to marry a wife just to have children. In the [-]s, after her marriage failed and her spirit was on the verge of collapse, she met him by chance.One is a "defect" in politics, and the other is a misfortune in life, making do with life.There is no wedding dress, no firecrackers; no natal family, and no in-law family.Made a home in an abandoned chicken coop.

It was really good, and he got his wish. In the second year, he gave birth to a girl, and in the third year, he gave birth to a son.

The birth of a child does not bring joy.The wife is always frowning, thinking about the painful past, in a trance, paying special attention to things about men and women.She stared at her man.

His wife couldn't take care of the children, so he took the two children to the nursery in his factory.In winter, on the commuter car with the hood open, he wrapped two children with frozen hands in a cotton coat, carried a feeding bottle, lunch box, and diapers, and used his spine to block the howling cold wind.In summer, he brought a raincloth to protect his children from the scorching sun and wind and rain.In the workshop, he was both a technician and a car operator. When it was breastfeeding time, he walked into the nursery like a mother, holding a bottle in his hand, and fed his daughter and then his son.He was the only nursing father in the factory, a special permit issued by the workshop director.

Children are growing up and entering elementary school.It is the season when the "Cultural Revolution" is in full swing, and it is also the season when human nature is crazy.It's time for kids to join the Red Soldier.Due to his father's status as a rightist, his children were not eligible to join the Red Army. He said helplessly to his daughter, "It is Dad who is sorry for you." The feeling of guilt surpassed the daughter's tears of grievance.The daughter said innocently: "Dad, don't you want to be a rightist? My classmates won't call me a son of a bitch anymore." His nose was sore, but his heart was broken.

In order for the child to have a good future, he worked desperately, washing his soul with sweat.Even imagining Wang Jie and Ouyang Hai sacrificing themselves to save others, so as to show their hearts.He often worked for one eight hours, and another eight hours, but also did everything possible to engage in technological innovation.The worker master is the kindest. Seeing his transformation in this way, he was selected as an "activist studying Mao election".The military representative said: "There is no one in your workshop, how can you judge him as an activist?" He was not discouraged.

In order to make a living, he has to dig vegetable cellars, remove mud and build coal sheds.This is the housework that every ordinary family has to do in the 60s.He is from Shanghai, and he is a standard frail scholar, but he handles those heavy jobs proficiently.Once, he had just built a pile of mud walls, which were washed away by a night of torrential rain. Seeing that the mud he had worked so hard to remove had turned into mud cakes, he cried and said to his son who was not yet five years old: "Son, grow up quickly! Dad is too tired." His body can't support the two mountains of politics and life, but the torch of hope is burning in his heart, that is: "Son, grow up quickly!"

Without money, it is not a hardship. Before the 80s, everyone was poor, and they bought things by ticket anyway.Political discrimination is the real suffering. The right is a contradiction between the enemy and us. It is not easy for everyone to draw a line with you. Even husband and wife quarrel and scold: "You stinking rightist, want to shake the world?" He often hears this The heart-piercing scolding sound came from the mouth of his wife who slept on a kang.

The torment of life often made him fearful. His wife suffered from hallucinatory insanity. Sometimes she pressed a kitchen knife under the pillow, saying that it was to drive away ghosts.Sleeping with eyes open and exhausting his mind and mind, he finally became a skinny little old man, only a pair of bright eyes in the deep sunken eye sockets proved that he had just entered his thirties.

Out of pity, the party secretary of the factory persuaded him to divorce, and said to him sympathetically, "Get out soon! We can't bear to see you being tortured like that." He shook his head, looked at his young daughter, and looked down. He said in a loud voice: "Maybe it will be better when he is older, let's talk about it when the child grows up!" In this way, he pinned all his hopes on the child.

As time passed, the "Cultural Revolution" was over.After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, China set off a climax of rehabilitating unjust, false and wrongly decided cases. In February 1979, a wrongly marked rightist notice and a belated diploma were delivered to him. He took his daughter with one hand and his son with the other, and happily said to everyone:

"The Communist Party is good! Chairman Hua is wise." This belated trust came 22 years late in the course of his life.

The children are growing up, and my daughter has been admitted to the Executive Management Academy. She hasn’t been home for two weeks, and there is no news. There were no mobile phones in those days.He took a bus to the far suburbs, and then walked several miles to visit his daughter at school, carrying her daughter's favorite pickles in his hand.The daughter was lying on the bed and writing the party application, and said to her father happily: "Dad, please write one for me!" When he got home, he thought hard, and from the perspective of his daughter, he wrote an application for joining the party. I sent it to my daughter, and said: "Make a copy yourself! Write it neatly."

My son is determined to study in Japan, and he goes to study Japanese after get off work every day.No matter spring, summer, autumn or winter, no matter how late the night is, he always waits for his son to enter the house, watching his son devouring dinner before he lays down in peace.My son was admitted to Fukui National University in Japan, and he is really going to fly away.It was a drizzly morning, the son carried his luggage and went downstairs, and the car drove away, but he went upstairs quickly, touching his son's warm bedding, tears streaming down his face.He didn't know how to smoke, so he picked up a "Hongtashan" for the first time and anesthetized himself in the smoke.The father's concern will always fly with his son, and the annual prayers and the melodious bells of Kek Lok Si also fly to Dongying.

The son went to Japan, and he was transferred to Beijing.Not reconciled to guarding her mentally ill mother, the daughter wrote a long letter to her father, expressing that she would also study abroad. The letter said: "Dad, you still have five years of glory, but we still have a lifetime to go." Let’s go, you can’t leave the burden of mother to us.” His eyes were moist, because his wife’s illness caused his daughter to be upset, or because he foresaw the decline of her company, the daughter was determined to go abroad.He racked his brains to send his daughter and son-in-law to the other side of the ocean.When he waved goodbye to his daughter, he realized his loneliness. While passing the days of no relatives around him, he had to accompany his mentally ill wife to old age and death.

He took over as president of Chinatex Materials Group, one of the largest companies in China's textile industry.He worked day and night, the company was listed on the A-share securities market, and managed the listed H-share securities market; the company built a ten-story office building, and he was very sweet when he saw the asset appreciation report.However, whenever he returned to the empty home, a kind of loneliness of missing his children attacked his heart; a guilt of thinking about his wife made him panic.He understood that if his wife also came to Beijing, he would not be able to do his job, and his neighbors would not be able to think about peace.He had to be accompanied by a disabled nephew for six years as CEO.

Retirement is a kind of relief for him, like an old horse loosened from the harness, he can roam freely, chew grass, and look down at the world leisurely.He returned to his wife's side, hoping to melt away her hallucinatory heart with his tenderness like water, but he failed, and his wife became more ill.One day, she herself proposed to go to a mental rehabilitation hospital for treatment, hoping that the doctor would remove the ghost from her body.He escorted her to the ward of the mental rehabilitation center, bought a Xiaozao meal card for the canteen of the hospital, and was not at ease. He brought food from home every day, wrapped it in a coat and stuck it to her heart, and took a bus for more than an hour. to the hospital ward.Whenever facing the cold wind in early spring and stepping out of the gate of the hospital on the snow that was waiting to melt, he imagined why he should not be mentally ill.Another thought, he really got mental illness, who will take care of her?And who will take care of themselves?He staggered through the traffic, watching the men and women hurriedly walking towards their respective goals, he walked in a confused and mechanical way, until the time when the lights came on and the family reunion dinner, he still didn't want to go home.In fact, he has long lost the feeling of "home". He often says to people: "What is home? Home is where there is warmth." This is his longing cry.

The wife's hospitalization has brought concern to the daughter.The daughter asked her father: "Dad, did you force your mother to be sent to a mental hospital?" One sentence hurt his heart, and he said loudly to his daughter: "Your mother is going by herself. I can send her to the mental hospital." Tell you the phone number, why don't you talk to your mother directly." When the daughter on the other side of the ocean told him that it was her daughter who wronged him, he was so choked up that he couldn't say a word.Putting down the phone, he burst into tears like a wronged child.He stayed together and waited, cruelly castrating away all desires, in exchange for his daughter's doubts about her father.

The son's daughter was born in the United States, and everyone was happy. He said to everyone: "I have an American granddaughter." The son on the other side of the ocean also joked: "I am a dutiful son. Take them back to China and let my parents take care of them, so that they will not be lonely." He went to Beijing to pick up his granddaughter in person like a foreign guest, and his friends lined up to wait at Harbin Airport, and there was already a group of people waiting at home, including the newly hired nanny .His joy was beyond words. After drinking two glasses of beer, he staggered off the guests, hoping that history would turn a new page from now on. His wife would change her mind when she saw the next generation, and she would drive away illnesses and ghosts mentally. Granddaughter, live a life without making noise.

Desires often turn into disappointment. The granddaughter had just returned to China for four days, but the nanny insisted on going home, saying that it was the old grandma calling ghosts at night, which made her hair stand on end.The crying of the child was a normal movement, but his wife insisted that he had an evil disease and wanted to drive the child away.He was so disappointed that he hurriedly carried his granddaughter to a friend's house.In order to avoid his wife's unreasonable troubles, he had no choice but to say: "The granddaughter has gone to grandma's house." Since then, he is an old man who is nearly seventy years old, and his heart is broken into pieces.He had to look after his little granddaughter, he had to bear the torment of his mentally ill wife, and the pain and tiredness of his children on the other side of the ocean weighed heavily on his heart.His little granddaughter has a cold and fever, and he would rather not be his granddaughter but himself; his mentally ill wife has hallucinations of ghosts, how much he wants to turn himself into a ghost to drive away evil spirits for his wife; his children sleep on the subway and work as coolies abroad, and he resents that he has not saved for them Tuition fees for further study abroad.He often thought that as long as his children could live well, it would be fine even if he died.He understands that a father cannot replace a son, and the son should walk the path of the son himself.Such a father is destined to be the father who has lived the hardest life.

He knew that the sea of ​​suffering was boundless, but he silently waited for more bitter days.

In the bathtub, he watched the son help his father to take a bath, scrubbing it over and over again, and murmured, as gentle as coaxing a child.He thought of himself, with muddy tears in his envious eyes, and walked alone to the hot pool.

In the corridor of the hospital, he saw many elderly people sitting there peacefully, watching their sons and daughters line up for them, register, wait for a doctor, mark prices, pay money, and collect medicines, but he was alone in the long queue In, lined up one place after another.How much the two numb legs wished for a crutch to support his tired body and mind, he was overdrawing his life.

On New Year’s Eve, every family gathers around grandparents, parents, and friends to celebrate the new year. There are delicious meals, dumplings with big fillings, rice cakes like honey, and endless blessings and endless red envelopes.He could only wait by the phone, and when he had something to say to his son and daughter, he choked up as soon as the words came to his mouth. He waited eagerly for the blessing, holding the New Year's red envelope that could not be given out.

He gradually felt the weight of old age, waiting for an unknown fate.He murmured to himself that in the next life he would only be a son, not a father.

(Shen Kejian)

(End of this chapter)