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It was Qingming Festival again, and everyone seemed to be busy. I couldn't help thinking of my late grandmother and all the ways she had cared for me. I had to admit that I missed her terribly.
I'll never forget the year I returned to my hometown and saw how gaunt my grandmother had become, lying in bed. She was curled up in pain, her hands dry and her knuckles white. My mother and I couldn't believe that my grandmother was in the late stages of bone cancer. Even harder to believe was that more than a year earlier, when my uncle had taken her to the hospital for a checkup, they had already discovered the cancer. But when she got the test results, my grandmother told my uncle not to tell anyone else and refused treatment. She simply went home quietly and carried on with her daily routine of teaching at school.
For more than a year, my grandmother had endured the steadily worsening illness while teaching her students from the front of the classroom each day and bringing stacks of exam papers home to grade. When she held chalk and wrote Chinese characters on the blackboard, her hand throbbed with pain. Living alone in her hometown while her children had moved to the big city, she often lay awake in pain late into the night, tossing and turning until dawn. She bore all of it alone, keeping it from her children so they wouldn't worry. Afraid that they would struggle financially to pay her huge medical bills, she also tried as hard as she could to continue the teaching career she had devoted decades to, and to keep educating her students.
By then, nothing could be done to stop her illness from worsening. My mother and uncle could only try to ease her pain. But the few words my grandmother struggled to utter were, "No... don't spend any more money on me." She was willing to endure the suffering alone rather than let her children fall into financial hardship because of her. Even when her children took turns keeping watch beside her at night, she secretly chose to take **, hoping to end it all sooner and spare them the burden. When we realized what had happened in time and my grandmother finally woke, our hearts—which had been suspended in fear—settled, only to be pierced by her remorseful, guilty, trembling gaze. My mother held me and cried. "We're the ones who should feel guilty! Your grandmother—we let her down so badly!"
That night, my mother stayed with my grandmother. In the early hours of the morning, my grandmother suddenly seemed to regain some strength and managed to speak a few complete sentences. Her voice was full of reluctance as she said, "Seeing that you're all doing well, and that Chengcheng got into college—that's enough for me." Later, she fell asleep peacefully. We thought a beautiful tomorrow awaited us, but it was the last time we would see her.
Over the years, people from my hometown have sometimes spoken of my grandmother. They say she was a good teacher who taught her whole life, loved teaching, and loved children. She was like the people featured on those "Moving [Name]" TV programs, inspiring the villagers. I don't think my grandmother was quite so great, perhaps, but her love for her children and grandchildren ran so deep that, when I was only eight, it made me feel the bleakness of life and the greatness of a mother's love. She taught me a lesson I will never forget: however much pain and hardship she endured, her life was a testament to profound love.
Thinking of all this, I quietly made a promise to myself: no matter how far away I am or how busy I get, I'll come back every year at Qingming Festival to visit my grandmother and show her how much I miss her...