Irreparable Regrets

When I was a kid, I didn’t like my grandmother; she was eccentric and cold to me. Whenever I went to my grandmother’s house with my mother, she never took me in her arms and asked me questions as kindly as a neighboring grandmother would ask her grandchildren; she always looked cold.

Naughty is a child’s nature, I was not a naughty child, at most I ran in and out with the children in the house next door to my grandmother. Grandma was so upset that she scolded my mother for bringing me home.

Over time, I began to hate my grandmother, and when my mother went to her house again, I preferred to stay at home rather than follow her to her house. Only on New Year’s Day, when my mother wanted me to pay my respects to my grandma and grandpa, did I dawdle and reluctantly go to her house. After lunch, I ran back, not wanting to stay in her house for a minute.

After I became a family man, I slowly learned the reason for my grandmother’s eccentric temper from my mother’s fragmentary accounts.

Grandma had five children, and my great-uncle died at the age of six. When Grandpa was young, he liked to womanize, and Grandma fought with him for half of his life, and finally separated. My sister-in-law was my grandmother’s favorite child, I did not expect, before she got married, to find out that she had cancer, less than a year after the death of the disease. Multiple blows and pressure, so that the suffering of life’s Grandmother’s personality changed greatly, no longer interacted with people, all day shut up at home, or squatted in the fields.

After her mother, her second aunt, and her brother-in-law started their own families, Grandma’s days were empty. In order to kill time, Grandma stayed in the field, tended the crops, and planted vegetables that she couldn’t eat, dragging them to the street to sell. When there was no work to be done in the fields, Grandma was not at home. Every time my mother went to her house, the door was locked, so she didn’t have to look around, and when she ran into the fields, she could see Grandma sitting alone on the ridge.

The nighttime is the longest, Grandma does not watch TV, and no one to talk to her, alone to the window of the night sky, sucking dry rolls of cigarettes. In the cold house, except for an old black cat’s meow, it was Grandma’s sigh.

Understanding my grandmother’s loneliness and appreciating her loneliness, I found time to spend with her.

So every weekend, I dragged my young children to her house. My elderly grandmother's character gentle up, every time we go, her wrinkled face, suddenly smiled into a chrysanthemum, out of snacks to my children to eat, and then sit face to face with me, nagging family life. People are old, no memory, a lot of things grandmother repeated nagging how many times. In order to make Grandma happy, when she repeated the past, I pretended to listen very attentively, and sure enough, the more Grandma talked, the more excited she became, and when it came to the interesting past, Grandma would also grin with her shriveled mouth without a few teeth.

At that time, I was in the snack business and didn’t have much time to visit my grandmother, so I asked my mother to bring her some steamed buns or pastries that I had bought. Some days later, my mother went back and said that the buns or pastries I brought to my grandmother had grown moldy. I asked my mother why Grandma didn’t eat them. My mother said she couldn’t bear to eat them, and asked her to tell me not to give them to her, saying that I didn’t make much money from my business.

When my children grew up and I had extra time, my grandmother died.

Every time on the road, see and grandmother very similar to the old man, and my heart is very sad, if I the time back, I would have given my grandmother more filial piety, but then only focused on their own lives, neglecting my grandmother’s feelings.

Now, no amount of remorse can make up for my regret.

I hope everyone will cherish the present moment.