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The benevolent grandmother

memory

By BlossomParkerPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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One night, more than 10 years ago, I suddenly had a dream that the chickens in my hometown had died. That night, my grandmother died in the hospital, she was a chicken.

Grandma was an ordinary rural villager in northern Henan, illiterate and unable to work on the ground with her small feet, so naturally she "drew a blank" and often did not leave the house, only cooking or doing odd jobs at home. Later, I read the novel "The Three Inch Golden Lotus" by writer Feng Gicai, and further understood the cruelty of the feudal custom of cannibalism, "a pair of golden lotuses, a basket of tears". Once I asked my grandmother, "Does it hurt?" when I brought her footwash. Grandma smiled bashfully: "What does it hurt, I'm used to it." When I graduated from college and joined the workforce, my grandmother was over 60 years old, and I bought a walking stick to go back to my hometown for the first time. Grandma "nagged" "spend that money to do what", but smiling crutches in the yard around a circle. Grandmother also "chased" my daughter in the street. That year, the Spring Festival, take my daughter back home to the countryside for the New Year, when the three-year-old daughter was born and raised in the city, only ever eat pork and never seen a pig run, saw a pig in the street, "curious" chased after half a street, licking the love of the grandmother lived with a cane, followed by wobbling chase, but also while shouting: " Slow down, good boy, don't run." Neighbors seem to "first" see grandmother "run", and repeatedly urged "slow down". In the mid-1990s, my sister got married in the county, and rented a bus to pull dozens of people from my family to attend the wedding banquet in the county, more than 40 kilometers away. I "carried" my grandmother on the car, it was the "farthest trip" in my grandmother's life, and was the only time my grandmother took a car, trains and planes only seen on TV. "Holding my grandmother, I felt as light as a cotton wool.

"Confucius said to become benevolent, and Mencius said to take righteousness. Grandma had never heard of the Confucian "spring and autumn righteousness", but the good reputation of "benevolence and righteousness" had spread far and wide. When I was in junior high school, the contracted responsibility system had been in place for several years, and living conditions had improved, with the installation of a water press in my yard. My house was near the elementary school, which was jointly run by several villages at that time. During recess, many children of both sexes ran to my house to drink cold water from the pressurized well, and there was a lot of "chattering". Grandma boiled a big pot of boiling water every morning and asked the children to scoop it up and drink it, but also strongly urged: "Do not drink cold water, diarrhea." Basically, all the children in the three miles and five villages had drunk the boiling water boiled by their grandmother. Years later, when their grandmother died, many of them came to offer their condolences, and some came back from working thousands of miles away. The village secretary who gave the eulogy was the child who drank the water back then. Many of the mourners did not even know their father.

Father is the village's "barefoot doctor", the clinic is located at home, the village people often come to see the doctor, especially the child a shot cry, kind-eyed grandmother is like a hospital "old nurse", holding the child left and right persuasion, but also often exhort the child's parents. "Give the child the medicine on time, sleep a sweat will be fine." It can be said that most of the children in the village she has held. The village's married daughters returned to their families in the Spring Festival, always forget to pay their respects to their grandmothers, who always exhorted "be diligent, work more, and respect your in-laws" and other "car wheel" words. Nearby villages selling vegetables, selling bean curd and other small businesses, grandmother is also very warm to others, often let to the home to drink water, rest. Even the few begging for food in the surrounding villages (now long gone), grandmother always warmly give a bun, or end a bowl of "paste do" soup (the native language of northern Henan, is boiled with corn flour porridge).

More than 20 years after I joined the workforce, my grandmother died of illness. Before the death, repeatedly instructed to keep the funeral simple, originally intended to be buried three days later, but the person in charge said to come to condolences too many people, so five days after the burial. The day of the funeral, the money dragon flies, the flag fluttering, the condolences of people lined up half the street.

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BlossomParker

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