Return to Konoha

Once again, the annual Qingming Festival has arrived. It seems as though everyone has become busy on this day, and I cannot help but think of my grandmother who has departed from us. As I recall all the memories of how she cherished me, I have to admit that I miss her terribly.

I cannot forget that year I returned to my hometown and saw how gaunt and skeletal my grandmother looked lying in bed. She was curled up in agony, her withered palms showing white knuckles. My mother and I could not believe that my grandmother was already in the late stages of bone cancer. What was even harder to believe was that more than a year prior, when my uncle had taken my grandmother to the hospital for a checkup, her bone cancer had already been discovered. Yet, the moment she received the test results, my grandmother told my uncle not to let anyone else know, nor did she seek treatment; she simply returned home quietly and continued to go to school to teach as usual.

It turned out that for over a year, my grandmother, who stood on the podium every day to teach her students and brought stacks of exam papers home to grade, had been enduring the torture of her worsening condition. Whenever she held a piece of chalk to write characters on the blackboard, waves of sharp pain would shoot through her hand. Living alone in our old home while her children moved to the big city, she often could not sleep in the dead of night due to the pain, tossing and turning until dawn. She bore all of this—all of this suffering—entirely on her own, never telling her children, never letting them worry about her. She worried that her children would face financial hardship paying for her massive medical bills, and she did her best to extend her decades-long teaching career, doing everything she could to educate and nurture her students.

At this point, nothing could be salvaged; my mother and my uncle could no longer stop the deterioration of my grandmother's condition, and the only thing they could do was to alleviate her pain. Yet, the few words my grandmother managed to struggle out were: "Don't, don't spend any more money on me." She was willing to endure these torments alone rather than let her children fall into financial distress because of her. She even chose to secretly take medication while her children were taking turns keeping watch at night, hoping to end it all sooner so as not to be a burden. When we discovered her in time and she finally regained consciousness, our suspended hearts were set at ease, only to be pierced by the self-reproach, guilt, and trembling gaze in my grandmother's eyes. My mother held me and wept, saying, "We are the ones who should feel guilty! Your grandmother—we have failed her so miserably!"

That night, my mother stayed with my grandmother. In the small hours of the morning, my grandmother suddenly seemed to regain some spirit and spoke a few complete sentences. She said with deep reluctance: "Seeing that you are all doing well, and that Chengcheng has been admitted to university, that is enough." Later, she drifted into a peaceful sleep, and we thought it would be the start of a beautiful tomorrow; however, it was a final farewell.

Over the years, people in my hometown still mention my grandmother from time to time, saying she was a good teacher who taught her whole life, loving her profession and her children, much like the people who "move the nation" on television, touching the hearts of everyone in the village. I think perhaps my grandmother was not that "great," but her love for her children and grandchildren was so profound that it made me, only eight years old at the time, feel the sorrow of life and the greatness of maternal love. She made me remember forever that no matter how much pain and hardship one is in, her life wrote a story of love that was deeply profound.

Thinking of all this, I have secretly made a resolution to myself: no matter how far away I am or how busy I get, I will return every Qingming Festival to visit my grandmother, to show how much I miss her.