Growing up on a small farm, I lived a life that I took for granted. My father worked in the city as a plumber (水暖工). He was not highly educated, but he was smart, looking at problems in an engineer's way. He was a man made of leather, brass and chewing tobacco who tried to teach my brother and me useful things, including respect. He also had a temper and was strict with us, for he would scold us when we made some careless mistakes. Sometimes, my father seemed like a distant enemy to me and I didn't like him very much.
One day I came home from primary school and his car was already there. Once inside, I was told by my mother that he didn't feel well. His back hurt. My father never missed work; in fact, when he came home, he went to the barn to work even more. I remember looking at him secretly around the corner as he lay on his bed in the middle of the day.
Later, my mother told me he got multiple myeloma (多发性骨髓瘤), a type of cancer. As the cancer grows, the person will shrink because the disease destroys the body's energy and the abnormal antibodies cause problems for other cells and tissue. Bones eventually look like Swiss cheese, and when they break, they may never heal. But I didn't realize that my father's time was rather limited and just treated him the same way I used to.
For the last year of my father's life, his entire day consisted of rising from his hospital bed in the living room and walking to his chair to sit and think. He was predictably in that chair when I came home one day during the ninth grade. I do not remember where my mother and brother were, but the two of us were alone.
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He asked me to sit down and what he told me still moves me these decades later.
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At that moment, I realized that he was doing more than telling.
