Grandpa

Today, me and my family went to visit my grandpa as usual.


When grandpa saw us, he tried his best to stand up from the chair. He then took something inside his drawer. That was a few of papers that full of words. 


Without saying any words, he passed the paper piece by piece to my mother, his dearest daughter. I was standing behind my mother, and we read the word by word, piece by piece that was written by grandpa together.


From the few of papers, my grandpa talked about his coming birthday. Everybody knows depth inside that that how much grandpa likes to celebrates his birthday with all his sons, daughters and grandchildren. We would love to celebrate with him too.


Sadly, on the papers, he wants to cancel his birthday celebration in this year. 


"Everybody is busy, nobody takes me to buy fish, vegetable and so on. I decided to cancel my birthday. I'm an old man now, but I am lucky. I can still write a few words, shower, eat porridge, and drink water by myself. The only thing I am not lucky is I got all the diseases with me.. I guess this is called the process of born then old then get sick and then leave this world one day..."


In that second, I have no idea how was my mum feel, but I felt that my heart very heavy. Grandpa thought that he is just a burden for this family.


After he shown us, he kept his papers in drawer again. Then, he smile like usual and asked my mum to pass him the Chinese calligraphy that written by him. He still play the role of being a responsible father. He read the Chinese Idioms for my mum, and make sure my mum remember. 

In that moment, I saw a father teaching his little daughter the principles about life. He was teaching with full of patience, my mum was nodding her head to everything he taught, just like his little gal like last time, and now.

Grandpa can still write and you can see, the words written by him is everywhere in his room. I still remember, last time, when grandpa owned a house, when he was healthier and the time he still able to cook for us, the words was everywhere in his whole house.

Grandpa even wrote a "壽" (birthday) that was taller than himself to celebrate his 86 years old birthday. That time he was still in his old house.
Beside was grandpa pictures that shown how much he changed in after 50++ years. He was a very strong father and husband who take care of 5 daughters, 3 sons, and my mentally ill grandma.

My grandpa is 96 years old in this year. According to my aunt, grandpa celebrated 96 years old last year, too. 

My dad said, it does matter. It means he always young.

My heart getting heavier and heavier.


Here, I just want to tell you grandpa, we will celebrate your birthday every year as usual, like how we always do, nothing will be more important than that. 

What you have taught my mum, my mum have also taught me, this was what she taught since I was young:
“万事以孝为先”.

"Filial piety is the very first thing you need to consider before everything is done."