The last time I saw you was just after the May Day holiday. You came without warning. At first, I was a little annoyed. I thought you should have told me in advance, because I had not prepared anything.
You said there was nothing to prepare. You had only come to see how my illness was going.
To put your mind at ease, and also because I did not want you to exhaust yourself, I tried very hard to look confident about my treatment. When you suggested that we wait until the weekend and go to the hospital for another examination, I refused. That night, you decided you would leave for Guangzhou the next day.
You, who had never paid much attention to your appearance, wore a shirt that day. You looked unusually neat and proper, though you had clearly become thinner and weaker. You told me to take good care of my health. You said I was the only hope of our family.
When I heard that, I only felt awkward. You had always been strict with me. Even after I entered high school and you became much gentler, you had never said anything like that. So I never thought of it as the kind of softened words a person leaves behind when death is near.
On the afternoon of June 27, when I learned that you had suddenly suffered a cerebral infarction and had been taken to emergency care, my mind went blank. Still, following the doctor’s advice, I chose surgery. I told Mom over the phone, “Don’t panic.”
There was a few seconds of silence on the other end. I knew what that silence meant. She must have been trying with all her strength to hold back her emotions. Sure enough, when she spoke again, her voice was already trembling with tears, yet she was the one trying to comfort me.
At first, I thought: at least it was not a cerebral hemorrhage. If the clot could be dissolved and the blood vessel reopened, perhaps you would be fine, though recovery would take time. But later Mom called again and said the situation was not optimistic. After the vessel was cleared, bleeding had appeared inside your skull—thirty or forty milliliters. When I spoke with the doctor, he said there were only two options: conservative treatment or craniotomy. But whichever we chose, they had little confidence.
After observing for a while, they found that the amount of blood in your skull was still increasing. At that point, we felt that no matter what, we had to try. We could not give up. But when you were pushed into the operating room, the doctors discovered that your stomach was also bleeding. The craniotomy could no longer be performed. The last trace of hope was gone.
On the 27th, I had just boarded the plane to Guangzhou when I received the call. The situation was very bad. You could only be transferred back home. My cousin spoke plainly: he hoped I would go home ahead of time and prepare for the funeral.
I got off the plane in a panic and bought a high-speed rail ticket back to our hometown. I did not eat or drink anything the whole way. When I arrived, my uncles were already waiting at the door. By evening, more people had come, many of whom I did not even know.
In the past, when I argued stubbornly with you, I would say, “They are your guests.” Only now did I truly understand how childish that thought had been. Your guests had come to see you, even though you had not yet arrived home. They sat in the courtyard, talking, sometimes even laughing. Aunt Xiang was especially emotional. Whenever she mentioned what kind of person you were, or how your illness had come on, her voice would break. She and her husband—your younger brother though not by blood—must have respected you deeply.
But I was slow to react. Maybe I was simply too tired. Most of the time, I sat there without saying much. Only now and then, when someone mentioned something, my nose would sting and I would hold back tears. After seeing them off, closing the door, and washing up, the thought that came to me was this: you were the head of this family.
When I turned off the light, I remembered a question my younger cousin had once asked me over the phone: “What happiness did Fifth Uncle ever get to enjoy because of you?”
My youngest uncle also said that you had worked hard your whole life. You had finally begun to let go, finally wanted to rest properly, and then not long afterward you became ill—so terribly ill.
My cousin said the treatment process was too painful: openings made in the body, tubes inserted... even imagining it was frightening. Yet as I write this, I honestly still cannot picture it. Even though you were usually weak, I could not believe you had reached that point. I kept feeling that when you arrived home before dawn, you would still be able to smile and greet me.
In the early hours of the 28th, the phone rang. Through the receiver came a sharp, urgent alarm. The doctor accompanying you said your vital signs were almost gone. They had given six injections of adrenaline and performed CPR. Now they were waiting for us to make the final decision.
I remembered that you had once told my sister and my cousin that you had read in a fortune-telling book that only your daughter would be able to see you off at the end. You never said that to me. Because of that, I regretted getting off the plane. If I had flown to Guangzhou, perhaps I could have seen you one last time, even if you could no longer respond.
In the end, we decided to let go. The doctor asked my sister to remove your oxygen tube. Her voice was full of guilt, as though she had been the one to end your life. Mom blamed herself too. You had been fine the night before, yet the next day she had not discovered your symptoms earlier. I blamed myself as well. If, when you came to my place that time, I had asked you to stay a few more days; if I had followed your wish and gone to the hospital for another examination; even if I left early and returned late for work and had no time to keep you company, perhaps you would at least have felt more at ease.
At nine in the morning on the 28th, you came home.
Before you arrived, I kept wondering whether I would cry so much that I would become a burden. But relatives had already told me I had to hold myself together, because at that moment Mom could not be the one everyone depended on.
When you were carried down from the ambulance, your eyes were peacefully closed. Your hair had been shaved off. Your body was stiff. I brought hot water and used a towel to wipe your body. After I wiped away the blood around the needle marks, fresh blood soon seeped out again. My cousin said your blood clotting had gone wrong, and that was why surgery could not be done.
The relatives helped dress you in burial clothes and put on your hat. You lay on the straw mat with your eyes shut. In that instant, I seemed to see my grandfather, who had died when I was still in primary school.
My aunt asked me to straighten your fingers and place them close to your body. When I tried to bend them straight, I clearly felt a kind of resistance, an elasticity that made it difficult. My aunt cried beside me and said, “Fifth Brother, your son is fixing your fingers for you...”
After she said that, your fingers became much easier to straighten.
What followed were two nearly sleepless nights. I knelt before your coffin, burning paper money for you, lighting incense for you. At that time, I wondered whether the custom of keeping vigil through the night existed so that the living would become exhausted and numb, and then perhaps the death of someone closest to them would not hurt quite so much.
On the day of the funeral, the coffin was opened so we could see you one final time. There was a bit of paper charm left on your face. I gently wiped it away with my finger. Your face was already cold and rigid. You still looked exactly as you had when you arrived home.
I remembered the time I bought you a lump-sum pension insurance policy. Back then I even said that you had to live for several more decades, long enough to earn the money back.
But everything happened so quickly. It was as if only yesterday you had walked into my home, smiling as you spoke to me, and today you returned as a stiff body.
You never really got to enjoy any happiness from me.
All I can do is comfort myself with this: at least you did not suffer for a very long time. At least from now on, you can truly rest.