I got off the high-speed rail and it took 10 minutes. When we arrived at the hospital, the painkillers were almost finished, and my father felt less pain and just fell asleep.
My brother and sister were sitting on the chairs at the end of the bed, and my aunt was sitting on the empty hospital bed next to them. They looked awkward and panicked. It's no wonder that the doctor said my father's condition was so dangerous that our brothers and sisters were all panicked, not to mention that they got married halfway.
Three years after my mother passed away, my father and aunt were introduced to each other. A year later, the two received their certificates and have been together for fourteen years.
Fourteen years, such a long time, how many differences must be smoothed out, right?
No!
My father is a retired cadre, and my aunt is a rural woman; my father thinks my aunt is young, and my aunt thinks my father has a pension. This was the original intention of the two of them happily coming together. However, the fifteen-year age gap, personality differences, living habits, and cognitive differences between the two people not only did not disappear with time, but the longer the time passed, the more obvious the differences between them became.
My father was a soldier and had a short temper, and he was quick to do things in a hurry. But my aunt was a slow-tempered person, holding the basin of water with a swaying step. My father is diligent and loves to be clean, but my aunt is a bit lazy. The pots and stoves at home are all dirty. In the first two years, the two of them tolerated each other and accommodated each other. In the past few years, I don't think anyone wanted to accommodate the other. As long as I go home, the two of them will guard me and tell each other something wrong.
The father thinks that the aunt is lazy and the house is so dirty that no one can come in; the aunt thinks that the father is picky and is reluctant to spend some money on her; the father thinks that the aunt does not know how to adjust the cooking, and only cooks the same two or three things all day long; the aunt thinks that the father cannot speak and always offends the neighbors; the father thinks that the aunt cannot He lies down all day when he has nothing to do, and doesn’t know how to go out for activities; the aunt thinks that her father doesn’t know how to restrain himself at such an old age, and he always climbs up and down the ladder, which worries her...
and so on, anyway, it sounds like the two of them dislike each other and are on guard against each other.
In the past two years, the most common thing I see when I go home is two people holding their mobile phones, ignoring each other and not disturbing each other.
My father is already eighty, and his health this year is obviously not as good as in previous years. And my aunt renovated her old house last year. I wonder if she has any plans.
My father said that he still had to rely on his son to support him in his old age, so he passed on the family house to my brother without telling my sister and me. In the early years, my brother objected to my father finding another wife. For this reason, he smashed all the windows in the house and everyone in the village knew about it. He may have gotten older over the years and suddenly changed his gender. Although his temper is still bad, he obviously cares a lot about his father.
My brother considered that his father was getting older and was worried about being at home, so he wanted to rent a house for his father in his city so that he and his aunt could live there. My father naturally agreed, but my aunt was not willing. She told me privately that if I had lived close to my brother in the past, my brother and sister-in-law would inevitably raise their eyebrows and raise their eyes all day long. I reassured her over and over again that we didn’t live together and that my brother and sister-in-law wouldn’t be so unsighted, but the aunt still kept shaking her head with concern.
The two of them had been putting off moving to the city, but this time their father's illness suddenly brought the matter to the fore.
Since we were all in the hospital, we asked my aunt to go home and rest. The hospital is nearly thirty kilometers away from our home. My aunt called me the next day after returning home and told me that she might also be positive. I told her to take medicine and rest well. At this time, my father was still in the ICU ward. My sister's family of four were all suffering from fever. Only my brother and I took turns taking care of my father. We really couldn't take care of her.
Auntie's only son works in a small city thousands of miles away. Apart from making frequent phone calls, he has no time to take care of his mother.
In the afternoon of the same day, my brother called my aunt and told her to take medicine and drink water, and asked her to talk to her son. The two of them should keep in touch by phone at all times to prevent emergencies.
I was listening with mixed feelings in my heart. Her son is hundreds of kilometers away, how can he really hope for anything? Maybe it’s not as timely as us brother and sister took a taxi back. At this time, I feel that her son is not as good as outsiders like us who can take care of her.
On the night of the third day, my father's condition improved and he was transferred from the ICU ward to the general ward. My brother told me again that he had talked with his father and asked his father to go to his place after he was discharged from the hospital, and then let his aunt go there during the Chinese New Year, but his father refused to go, and he was helpless.
I can probably guess why my father didn't go. I advised my brother: If a person is not a stone, even if the stone is covered with heat for fourteen years, let alone a human being? According to Dad's character, if Auntie doesn't go, he would rather eat the unpalatable porridge cooked by Auntie and nag and complain about her while eating, rather than leave her to go to your place.
What my father often said to me in private before was: Oh, it’s so unsatisfactory! Just make do with it! And what my aunt told me was: If you don’t go to your brother’s place, if you want to go, separate from your father!
However, in my opinion, in the past fourteen years, the two of them have long been integrated into each other's lives, and neither can do without the other: the father needs the aunt to have three meals a day and be with him all the time; while the aunt has no source of income and can only rely on the father to survive. Although she has been ruthless, I know she has no way out.
The two of them stumbled along like this, supporting each other and guarding each other. How long they could walk depended on fate.
