In a small bungalow by the sea, a woman woke from her afternoon nap with a sense of loss. For a long time, she could not calm down, and tears silently spilled down her cheeks.
The woman was now in her early fifties, and her current husband was about her age. When the pension policy had first been introduced, her husband had set aside money every month to pay into pension plans for both of them. Though this had made their lives relatively difficult for a time, once they reached fifty, while others their age worried about growing too old to work and earn money, the monthly pension of over a thousand yuan each was enough for her and her husband to live very comfortably in the village.
They no longer had to drag their aging bodies through grueling work.
She was very satisfied with her life now, but she still occasionally thought of her late husband, wondering why he never visited her dreams to tell her how he was doing.
Until today.
Her husband, who was working in the yard, heard her sobbing. He quickly put down the greens he had just pulled up and came inside, asking in puzzlement, "What's wrong? Why are you crying all of a sudden?"
"Lin, I just had a dream. I dreamed of him... He said he didn't hate me for remarrying. It was only because he'd had no choice all these years that he couldn't visit my dreams. He also asked me to thank you for him, and said he didn't blame you either." With tears in her eyes, the woman repeated what her late husband had told her.
Lin and the woman's late husband had once been fairly close friends. By getting together with her, he had also borne condemnation and