In Memory of My Maternal Grandfather

7,280 characters2006.04.08

My maternal grandfather passed away on the evening of the Qingming Festival.

Today is his funeral service. My father only told me about it yesterday and asked me to go, which was only natural; my mother, worried it would affect my studies, had not wanted to let me come back, but that was clearly unreasonable. Though I was not especially close to my grandfather, how many grandfathers can I have?

My mother and her sisters were not especially unable to accept his passing, because my grandfather had had uremia for eight years, and for more than the past half year his condition had been extremely dangerous; everyone had long since been mentally prepared. Of course, at the memorial service they still cried as if their hearts were breaking, because, after all, it truly was the last time they would ever see their father.

People say modern medicine is unreasonable: more than 90% of medical resources are devoted to maintaining the last 10% of people’s lives, and most of those resources are in fact consumed in barely sustaining the final stage, when death is already undoubtedly near and the patient is struggling in pain. For my grandfather, this was exactly the case. Suffering from serious illnesses such as uremia and cerebral infarction, and then breaking a bone during a critical stage, he was able to hold on until now only by being kept alive with large sums of money—long-term use of wild ginseng and cordyceps, and in the final period a long spell of “albumin” support as well. Very early on, when doctors came to treat him, there was already the feeling of “why are you still alive?”

People say the distribution of medical resources is unreasonable: to exhaustingly prolong a tiny bit of life for people whose death struggle makes life worse than death is not as good as investing more in primary care and health maintenance. The reasoning sounds simple enough, but when it happens to your own relatives, no amount of argument can do anything but sound pale and empty. Watching one’s nearest and dearest struggle on the edge of death, we would gladly throw in our entire strength just to win even a moment more.

During the period when my grandfather was gravely ill, many things changed. My mother and her four sisters took turns staying with him, not only giving as much money as they could, but also devoting a great deal of time and energy; in fact, in modern times, the latter is even more precious. Their care came from genuine feeling, so much so that later my grandfather fired the specially hired caregiver, saying she was “not gentle enough” — “Look at my daughters: why can’t you be a little more gentle like them?” In truth, the caregiver had been hardworking enough; it was really just that my stubborn grandfather was hard to serve, while my mother and the others were too good at serving him.

Originally, my grandfather’s family had very deep conflicts. Between the two sisters, and among some relatives as well, there had been old grudges, and for more than a decade they had not spoken to one another. But after my grandfather fell ill, everyone came together again, and now long-standing grievances have long since melted away. During the time spent caring for my grandfather, my mother and the others also gained many insights and changed in many ways.

In those days of dying struggle, although one bore the pain of life worse than death and the humiliation of losing the dignity of being able to care for oneself, to be alive is after all to be alive. An old person who is alive has a kind of spiritual strength, completely different from the feeling that the dead give to their younger descendants. They struggle on the edge of life and death simply in order to see their loved ones a little more, and the loved ones also hope that their own efforts and achievements will let the elders see them a little more. The effort to prolong life in vain is truly not something one can fault.

After a person dies, he can only live in people’s memories; of course, perhaps there really are spirits in heaven, who knows—I am willing to believe these things. In any case, let us remember him as much as we can; if nothing else, let us prolong a little bit of his “simulacrum.”

I did not have much contact with my grandfather, because he lived very far away—Taopu. The deepest impression from childhood was playing chess with him. I never beat him! In fact, even when my chess skill had approached the level it reached in adulthood, I still had never beaten him.

Chess is a matter of wisdom, and my grandfather always taught us: “A move must have roots”; “You must plan your future moves”… My grandfather was very intelligent, and also very diligent and kind. He lost his father in childhood and relied on his old mother in the most difficult era; his filial piety was widely known—so the story goes, there was something he did out of filial devotion that made his entire early life suffer. And perhaps it was to be stubborn that his later life suffered…

My grandfather was a stubborn man. He had a strong-willed personality, a keen sense of justice, and was blunt-spoken besides. So although he worked hard, was diligent, clever, and capable, and once earned a second-class merit award for technological innovation and arduous work, in the end he was still never trusted with any important post—who would dare make use of such a person, a walking sharpened retort who never knew how to keep his mouth shut? My grandfather’s life can be described as one of frustration and unrealized ambition.

In his later years, my grandfather seemed to have some regret over the innocent stubbornness of the past, but his kindness, uprightness, and stubborn temperament never changed at all. I remember that last summer, my grandmother met someone on the street who seemed to have called out her childhood name and claimed to be a relative from the countryside, so she absentmindedly brought him home. As soon as he opened his mouth, he asked to borrow money. My kind grandfather, without even asking why, fumbled out 8,000 yuan from who knows where he had hidden it and laid it on the table, then fumbled around again, turning to find change. That scoundrel picked up the money on the table and left, and from then on vanished without a trace. My grandfather was so angry for a moment that he could not get over it; his condition worsened, and it seemed never really to have improved until now. Even lying in a hospital bed, when he could barely speak clearly, if he saw the nurses in the hospital being somewhat rude to the patient in the next bed, he still could not help but lecture them a few words: “You must be reasonable.” But because he made such a fuss, in the end even the patient in the next bed moved away…

My grandfather had four children in succession, but they were all daughters; and my grandmother died early, so in his later years he took a second wife. Coincidentally, the third generation born to his four daughters turned out to be four boys. All four daughters were very filial, and all four boys also turned out well. If my grandmother were still alive, she would probably be delighted.

“Taopu isn’t far at all!” — this was the phrase my mother kept crying out repeatedly during the farewell to the body. Taopu is indeed far; a round trip takes half a day. In the past I only went once a year during the National Day holiday, and still complained endlessly. My mother said that now she had finally awakened to the fact that Taopu is actually not far, and that we should go there often to see him, but it was already too late.

I’ll write only this much for now. I do not know many of my grandfather’s legendary stories—my grandfather, and my grandfather’s and grandmother’s generation, all left their hometowns in childhood and struck out in old Shanghai in their youth (my grandfather lost his father at six and came to Shanghai alone at thirteen). Their growing up, their suffering and being cheated in Shanghai, and their eventual settling down there—each of these stories is itself a legend. The legendary stories of ordinary people probably do not concern anyone, but for later generations, these stories are spiritual wealth far more precious than any biography of a famous person.

Oh yes, my grandfather’s name was Xu Rongxin. Let me carve his mark into this article.

2006年4月8日