Golden Greenery

After getting up in the morning, Zhuo Yang ignored the cold coming from the Alps. He only put on a baggy thin sweater and started practicing the piano. But recently, he has no intention of playing those famous songs, so he played "My Motherland" casually.

There are also "Hymn to Heroes", "Yellow River Cantata", etc. These are all songs that he learned when he first started learning piano as a child. These were the first songs he memorized music. He was so familiar with them that he didn't play the piano for fifty years. Can't forget it either. Whenever Zhuo Yang plays these pieces, he is reminded of the unbearable memory of his childhood when his mother held up a feather duster and forced her to practice piano every day.

But when he played these songs today, Zhuo Yang was thinking of Lao Mu's father, Uncle Mu. Uncle Mu is an old soldier. Whenever Zhuo Yang played these revolutionary songs to him when he was a child, Uncle Mu would curl his lips and think that the piano playing was too soft and not as powerful as the whole group's chorus. Although he disliked it, Uncle Mu still liked to let Zhuo Yang play it to him, and continued to dislike it after listening.

Not long after playing, Zhuoyang stopped and sat on the piano bench for a while. After checking that the time was OK, he called Lao Mu again.

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"Mr. Mu, we have a meeting at Guangde Building in the evening, and the seats have been reserved. How about I go with you?" Hou San'er said to Lao Mu, bending his waist.

Guangde Building is an old-fashioned theater in Dashilan outside Qianmen. It was built around the same time as the Grand Theater in Paris and Teatro alla Scala in Italy. There are performances of opera and folk arts here almost every day, also known as "hui".

"Okay!" Lao Mu shook his dazed head and forced out a smile. "Then I'll go with you tonight."

Lao Mu didn't know how he was feeling now. Anyway, he wasn't feeling uncomfortable or sad. Maybe it’s the ‘emptiness’ that young people often call it, or maybe it’s a feeling of being at a loss.

Father is dead!

More than two weeks ago, Lao Mu's father, Uncle Mu, finally failed to leave the ward again and died of kidney failure at the age of 76.

After Lao Mu saw off Zhuo Yang in Xi'an, who was visiting his father on vacation, he stayed for another week to see if the situation was still the same, so he told his mother and returned to Beijing. He was very busy with business and he didn't want to delay it too much. Although he was gone, Lao Mu still called home every night to check on the situation.

At one moment, my family said that she was getting better, and that I could drink porridge and lost my temper. At another moment, they said that I was still confused and no one recognized me. The hospital refused to let me go, and they just kept delaying it again and again. Lao Mu originally planned to take time to go back, but suddenly he received a call from his eldest sister: "Come back quickly, Dad...he is dying."

When Lao Mu hurried back to the hospital again, his father was already dying in the ICU, and he was only relying on occasional injections of epinephrine to keep him alive. People gathered outside the ward. Lao Mu had not seen so many people surrounding his father for a long time. Some of them he knew, such as Uncle Xing from the Provincial Party Committee Office and Uncle Zhao from the Armed Forces Department. There were also many people he had never met before, some of them soldiers, some of them no longer. Uncle Xing told Lao Mu that these were his father's old subordinates, soldiers that his father had led at different times, and some whose lives were saved by his father from the battlefield. They all came from all over the world today.

The time interval between each injection is getting shorter and shorter, and the doctor has made it clear that it cannot exceed two hours. The two sisters did not dare to cry loudly. The mother was persuaded to go home in advance. Everyone was looking at Lao Mu.

Lao Mu didn't know why he didn't feel sad, he was just depressed, so depressed that he wanted to escape from the hospital, but he knew he couldn't.

My father was lying there with his eyes closed tightly, his lips kept mumbling,

But he couldn't make any sound, and his lips were very dry and chapped. The eldest sister used a cotton swab dipped in water to wipe her father's lips. She lay next to her ear and cried and asked him: "Dad, if you have anything to say, say it and we will remember it." But the father could not say anything.

Both sisters are more than ten years older than Lao Mu. Uncle Mu has a serious patriarchal mentality. He does not believe that women are suitable to work in the army. Therefore, Lao Mu's two sisters wanted to join the army after graduating from high school but were scolded by their father. Later refused. The eldest sister went to a shopping mall to work as a salesperson, and the second sister entered a textile factory after training at a technical school. After receiving meager wages from work for several years, both sisters were laid off one after another. The eldest sister now runs a small dining table next to the middle school, and the eldest brother-in-law is working in the Education Committee after changing his career from firefighting. The second sister An Anxin is at home as a military relative, and the second brother-in-law is a deputy regimental pilot of the Air Force, flying an old J-6 training aircraft.

It was impossible to say that the two sisters had no complaints against their father, but at this time all the resentments had dissipated. Their eyes were swollen from crying because their father was leaving.

But Lao Mu couldn't cry!

Lao Mu didn't have much of a relationship with his father. Ever since he could remember, his father had never spoken to him properly. He was either training him, beating him, or about to beat him. He knew that his father had entrusted himself with the mission of inheriting the glory of the military, but he didn't want to. After being imprisoned and ruining his career in joining the army, his father's health collapsed, but Lao Mu still didn't want to be a soldier. That year, Brother Xiao from Beijing offered to help him solve the case and wear a military uniform, but Lao Mu refused. Perhaps this was due to his rebellion against his father.

The nurse came and gave me another injection, less than ten minutes after the last one. The doctor said that in this case, according to the regulations, there is no need for further injections. Everyone knows that Uncle Mu reached the last few minutes of his life.

Lao Mu looked at his father whose mouth was trembling. He wanted to squeeze out a few tears, but he couldn't. At this time, he didn't feel the slightest bit sad.

My father is from Shandong, so my ancestral home should also be Shandong. At the age of 13, my father left his hometown and left his grandmother, whom he had never met, to follow the army in the war. I heard that when my grandmother died, my father was sneaking a surprise attack on the Japanese 5th Army in Zaozhuang. The rest of the family was also in disarray during the war years. My father has never been back to his hometown in Shandong since the 1950s. He has lived in the melting pot of the army all his life. My father no longer speaks Shandong dialect, but like many people That kind of speaking is not very standard Mandarin.

The physical sign monitor sounded the alarm again. Uncle Mu's heartbeat and pulse quickly slowed down, and his blood pressure dropped rapidly. The doctor nodded at Lao Mu and Uncle Xing. The ward couldn't accommodate so many people pouring in. Many people raised their heads outside the door and in the corridor. They all gathered around Uncle Mu.

Uncle Mu's chapped lips stopped trembling, and he suddenly opened his eyes wide, with a pair of tiger eyes under his withered face and pale hair. Uncle Mu stared at the ceiling, trying to lift his head off the hospital bed.

My sister quickly wiped away her tears and leaned into her father's ear: "Dad, do you have anything else to say...". Uncle Xing also asked softly: "Sir, what do you have to explain?"

Uncle Mu didn't answer, he just kept staring at the ceiling, glaring angrily without blinking. Suddenly, Shandong dialect with a strong accent roared out of his mouth.

"Mom——, I'm going to fight the Japanese!!"

With a long sigh, Uncle Mu suddenly closed his eyes, and the old hero passed away!

There was a lot of crying in the ward, and Uncle Xing gave an order: "Everyone is here, send it to the teacher! Salute——!!"

Thirty or forty grown men all had tears in their eyes, and thirty or forty raised arms were like monuments recording history.

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