My grief and tear

My brother accompanied my parents and two grandmothers, from the south to the north, sleeping peacefully in the poplar woods of the river outside the weir embankment in the west of the village. The river is the former course of the Jilong River, when the waves are raging temper, the weir embankment raised a few ears rap past, the Jilong River will lay down and meek as a lamb, the weir embankment is therefore respected by the village people as a god, to protect the village from flooding has been nearly a hundred years.

Brother is new, not yet three years, the soil on the grave is moved from his contracted fields, just raised when there are a few wheat seedlings he planted strong survived until May when the 100-day grave embroidered wheat ears, I thought at the time that was his food, is a gift to meet with his grandmother and parents.

My brother was at the bottom, when the news tree, as soon as I came down from the weir embankment, he knew about it, and so did my grandmother and parents. They were separated by a few quick-growing poplar trees, whose branches had areoles made of dead black branches, a home borrowed by cuckoos. The parents' graves are slightly higher, as if they were parents in life who stretched out their arms and took their son into their arms.

As I walked up the weir, the cuckoo called, my brother reporting the news, his voice ethereal, resounding on both sides of the Jilong River, and my grandmother and parents heard the familiar footsteps.

One by one, the children went far away and couldn't hear Buchou's call. I was the only one who was obsessed with the sound of Bugu's voice, and when it sounded, it was the time for my brother to report the news, and the time when the two grandmothers and parents were most happy because the time of "reunion" had come.

The knee-high artemisia grass drowned the grave, and only the head of the grave stood high, facing the blue sky and the canopy of trees, speechless.

The moment of "reunion", I do not cry, I know that the people I love so much do not have tears at this time. I put the golden wedding photo of my imaginary parents smiling like sunflowers in front of my brother's grave to make him happy and make him smile, but in fact, my mother, who died 43 years ago, did not even leave a photo behind.

The river and the poplar trees on both sides of the river responded to the cries of Bugu, the echoes of the sparkling waves and poplar leaves bouncing around in Bugu's areoles, the wind passing through the gaps in the leaves, making the sunlight distant for a while and then close, the artemisia under my feet slowly shifting, the dizziness occurring with every millimeter of movement of my shoes, and I held myself steady in the sadness without tears and cries.

The more I remember the past, the more I want to put her face and face in my pen, but I can't put down my pen again and again.

She was in her forties when she let me into the world, her hair was already gray, a disease made her go to the city for the first time in her life, and only after the operation did she pick up her life, when the ethereal sound of the bukkake sounded on both sides of the Jilong River, her father pushed her home with a wheelbarrow, the kiln tile basin was filled with water from the Jilong River, she looked at her reflection in it, and washed her hair in confusion, over and over again trying to wash away the gray and return her dark hair.

In her disappointment she resolutely Òwashed her hair, gray, until it was all white. She led me down the weir to my aunt's house on the north side of the highway, and the tall, broad thatch on both sides of the weir drowned her and me, and the heat came over me, sometimes with a feeling of fainting, and she made me sit on the gate pier of the big ditch cliff, and the water beneath my feet immediately rose to cool, and she picked a plant called dead hair "house garlic" and washed it and put it in my mouth, and the spicy taste immediately drove away fainting.

I followed her and watched her hair hairpin glowing silvery white in the sunlight as she went to her aunt's house and then to her grandmother's house on the east side of the village. cookies or a few eggs.

In the autumn morning, the two sisters heard the voice of the village tannoy ringing from the small captain, left the grinding bar and went to work in the production team, she could not let her son push the mill, alone bent down to push up four or five people can push the stone mill, pushing a pot of pancake paste when already full of sweat, did not care she wiped her face with cold water, which made her fall down from then on and did not get up.

She was cold and hot, and when she was cold, she covered herself with several thick blankets, but when she was hot, she wanted to be naked. My father borrowed all the money he could to get her admitted to the hospital. Late at night in the winter month in the east room of the old house, she was finally unable to survive. When I said goodbye, I saw her silvery white hair being Ònished into a dark blue hat embroidered with lace.

Her eyes were closed from weariness, and her yellowish cheeks were facing the house fence. A lock of white hair emerged from the lace-trimmed hat, and white became the original color of my memory. Mother, I can't walk away from the heavy pen, a person who has never taken a portrait in her life, I'll draw a portrait of her with words ------

She left late at night in the winter months, and the patio was silver at dawn, like the purity of her life, but also a hundred grasses wearing mourning and heaven and earth with sorrow. I draw her head full of hair, it is the silvery white of heaven and earth. She went away and took the winter with her.

Year after year, that snowy winter month, that lock of hair, has been white in my heart for forty-three years.