Original link: https://www.skyue.com/23082123.html
one,
On Friday, August 4th, at 11:39 p.m., I received a call from my dad. It was strange to call so late. Dad said on the phone “brother passed away” (meaning passed away), Jiujiang dialect “brother” and “guo” are a bit similar, and at the same time dad’s voice was a bit strange (later he realized that he was choked up), and this sentence was too Simple and cryptic, so I didn’t understand. I asked three or four times before I understood, but my instinct was to not believe it, because in the afternoon I also saw a picture of my brother sitting in a car eating instant noodles posted by my sister-in-law in Moments, and the two went to Wuhan together (I learned afterwards I went to Wuhan to pick up friends).
But Dad called so late, with a sobbing voice, and I realized that something must have happened to my brother, but I can’t be sure that he passed away (maybe he was hospitalized). After capturing this information, my mind was even more confused. To be precise, I was a little overwhelmed and didn’t know what to say to my father. Finally, I asked, “Then I’ll be back now?” Dad said, “Driving at night is dangerous, you should come back tomorrow morning.” I replied “Okay” and hung up. [The content of the dialogue is written from memory, roughly the same]
The entire call lasts only 1 minute.
After hanging up the phone for a few minutes, I rationally told me that what my father said just now should be that my brother passed away. But it is still unacceptable emotionally. The person who appeared in the circle of friends in the afternoon suddenly passed away. What happened? I really wanted to call my dad back and ask the reason, but I didn’t know how to ask, and I vaguely felt that my dad was in a bad state and couldn’t explain clearly.
At 11:50, I received a call from my second aunt, saying “something happened to my brother”, asking me to take a few more days off and come back quickly, the house was in chaos. When I asked “what happened to my brother”, the second aunt didn’t say it directly, and just prevaricated. This call time is shorter, only 43 seconds.
After hanging up on my second aunt, I was basically sure of the fact that “brother passed away”. Apart from “death”, there is nothing you can’t tell me directly. It’s just that I still couldn’t figure out the reason. I didn’t know it was a cerebral hemorrhage until I got home the next day. Everything happened very quickly. He died at home and it was too late to be sent to the hospital. Therefore, the pathological reasons behind the cerebral hemorrhage are not known.
I originally wanted to go back to Jiujiang early the next day according to my father’s suggestion, but I couldn’t fall asleep until after 1 o’clock, so I simply got up and packed my luggage, departed from Shanghai at 2 o’clock, took a nap for 2 hours in the Nanling service area at 5 o’clock, Halfway home.
Driving into the community, there is a temporary mourning hall on the square. Going upstairs and entering the house, relatives are all there, and the atmosphere is dignified. Everyone didn’t sleep last night. Parents and sister-in-law were not at all energetic. It’s hard to imagine how they survived last night. Only the 6-year-old niece is ignorant, and the 11-year-old nephew can’t fully understand what this means to him.
two,
Calculated according to the lunar calendar, my brother is 5 years and 1 month older than me, and his birthday is exactly one month earlier than mine. Therefore, compared with my parents’ birthdays, I remembered my brother’s birthday when I was younger. My brother’s birthday is 38 years old this year. Not yet.
My brother’s name is “Bin”, and I am “Qi”. We have a cousin whose name was originally planned to be “Lin”, which sounds like “ice cream”. So casual, some can’t laugh or cry. However, the cousin later took another name because “Lin” had the same pronunciation as the elder’s name.
Our brothers looked very much alike when we were two children. We probably took a group photo sitting on a swing during a spring or autumn outing in elementary school. If it wasn’t for the height difference, we would look like a pair of twins.
When I was young, the family conditions were very poor, not enough to support the two children to study. My elder brother was sensible early, and dropped out of school to become an apprentice after a semester of freshman year. I just started to learn how to work as a car driver, and there are night shifts, which is very hard for a fifteen or sixteen-year-old child. Soon, he changed his studies to be a chef, and since then he has been working in the catering industry for more than 20 years.
The elder brother learned the white case from the beginning as an apprentice, and later led the team to contract the white case in the hotel. Around my third year of junior high school, my brother had an accident in a hotel, and a large area of his chest and neck was burned by alcohol. At this time, my brother was only in his 20s, and the burn marks on his chest can still be seen to this day. I vaguely remember going to the hospital to see my brother and going to the hotel to defend my rights. It was the darkest moment when my brother was also our family, but I couldn’t understand these at the time.
After that, my brother worked in the hotel in Wenquan Town, Xingzi County (now Lushan City) for another five or six years. During this period, I was in high school in the urban area and university in Wuhan. I rarely met and communicated with my brother (I remember once Xingzi County saw the hotel where my brother worked), and I didn’t know that my family was difficult in the ivory tower. Not completely unaware, most of the living expenses of my university were called by my brother, and I always remember this.
My four years in college were four years of drastic changes in my family, and it was also a turning point in my brother’s life.
The first thing is to demolish the village. Before the demolition, the neighbors in the village were all building houses, hoping to get more compensation. The family had no money, so my mother told my brother about the situation in the village, so my brother used his savings from working for many years to build a house. This kind of building before demolition is a very risky matter, and many contacts have been found to solve the approval process. It turns out that our family caught up with the last batch, and the ones that were added later were all pushed down.
The second thing is that after the demolition, my brother had capital and started a catering business with others, and the business was very good in the first two or three years. Bought my first car in 2013. My mother is a conservative person, afraid of losing money, she does not agree with my brother’s investment in business. But my brother insisted on his ideas and succeeded.
The third thing is to get married and have children. My little nephew was born in the year I graduated from university (2012), and my little niece was born five years later. Speaking of the two children, there is an interesting thing, because I work outside all year round and only go home occasionally during holidays, so I am naturally not familiar with them. As expected, the two are new siblings. When they were five or six years old, they asked the same question during a Chinese New Year, “Why does that uncle live in our house and never leave?” Now my little nephew is 11 years old and sensible. My mother often teases him about it every time I go home.
The life cycle of restaurants is not long. My brother has opened many restaurants before and after. The specific business process is not clear, but from the daily chats of my family, I know that my brother does not make easy money.
As soon as my brother came out to do his own catering, the business was very hot, but at that time, the hot business in small cities would attract people’s envy, and there would always be gangsters to make trouble, and they would not leave without paying. My brother has been worried for a long time, and the final solution is also very rude. He directly finds some buddies from the society to take over the business, and then opens a store later, bringing them to buy some shares. Speaking of which, one of them was my elementary school classmate, and he played very well, and later became a good brother with my brother. Regarding this matter, my mother is very worried every time she mentions it, worrying that my brother will often be with these people and not follow the right path. In hindsight, my mother worried too much.
In fact, my brother’s business has not been booming for too long. After Xi took office, he started high-pressure anti-corruption, which had a great impact on the catering industry, but it can still be sustained. The epidemic in the next three years was the fatal blow. I survived these three years, but from what my mother told me later, my brother was so stressed that he needed to take medicine.
The most deadly thing is staying up late. Most of my brother’s branch stores are night market businesses, so for more than ten years, he has been working night shifts every day. Staying up late is one of the important reasons for such a sudden death at such a young age.
three,
Our family came out of poverty, and my brother played a vital role. For example, I used all my savings to expand the house before the demolition, insisted on investing in the catering business and achieved success. In the big family, the elder brother also plays an important role. My brother has been in the catering business in Jiujiang for more than ten years. On the one hand, he has accumulated a lot of social connections and can often help everyone solve some problems; Take some shares, earn some dividends, and relatives and friends who have difficulties directly arrange jobs in the store, which solves the employment of some people. My uncle told me that my brother is gone, which is a great loss to our family.
My brother and I are in different cities and have taken completely different career paths, so our usual communication is very limited. The last communication on WeChat was on June 11, and the voice call lasted 8 minutes and 33 seconds. The topic is nothing more than exchanging pleasantries and complaining about the current pessimistic economic situation and low housing prices. These are the things we talk about the most in our daily life, and occasionally my brother will ask me about some things, such as some ways to play on the Internet, how to buy insurance, and any recommendations for changing cars…
On WeChat, my brother and I exchanged more money than we exchanged pleasantries. Especially in the past three years of the epidemic, my brother often asked me to borrow money for turnover, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands, and the time ranged from a few days to a few months. Usually I transfer money as soon as I see the news, never asking why. Later, I bought a house in Wuhan , and my cash flow was also a little tight. Many times I didn’t have enough money, so I would borrow it to my brother for turnover.
Although I seldom say it, I know it in my heart. It is because of my brother that I can finish college, and it is also because of my brother that I can be so carefree in Hangzhou. Therefore, if I can help my brother financially, I will feel that I am still useful to the family.
My brother took on too much.
There is a question I have thought about before, especially recently: After graduating from university and studying the Internet for two years, if we return to Jiujiang and cooperate with my brother in catering, will we be more successful (such as making a chain brand), and my brother will Wouldn’t it be easier, would the ending be different?
My parents and sister-in-law must have a lot of “if only…” assumptions in their hearts.
Unfortunately, reality cannot be assumed.
Four,
I injured my foot last year, and my parents came to Hangzhou to see me. I wrote in my blog:
Deep down in my heart, I want to stay away from the shackles of blood relationship. It has nothing to do with the quality of the original family, but I am just afraid of the natural justice in blood relationship, even though it is also the natural justice defined by people.
I have little communication with my elder brother. Apart from objective reasons such as geographical distance and occupational differences, it is also affected by the above-mentioned concepts. After finishing my brother’s affairs at home this time, I wrote the following paragraph on Weibo:
In the past few days, I suddenly felt that I had a very strong sense of separation.
On the one hand, through studying and working hard in a big city, I have learned more and come into contact with many trendy ideas, and fully accept and adapt to the atomic society.
But on the other hand, the most intimate bond of family love, the most important spiritual support in the face of major accidents, is also the parents and brothers (and relatives of the big family) in the hometown. Rationally, I don’t like the traditional concept of “family”, but emotionally, I somewhat rely on it.
There is a concept that the relationship between the big family (and the village) in traditional society plays a role of insurance. Everyone comes together to support when something happens, and commercial insurance in modern society can completely replace its function. I used to agree very much, but now I want to correct it, this can only partially replace, to be precise, it can only replace the money part. Support in family relationships, in addition to money, also has emotions (very important). This is irreplaceable by commercial insurance.
Close friendships can also provide emotional support, but their establishment and maintenance are different than natural blood ties.
I’ve come to embrace and hopefully maintain the bond of blood ties.
——This article was created on August 10 and published on August 21
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