Grandma passed away last winter, very peacefully. It was as if she had simply fallen asleep on the bed.
I still clearly remember that the winter when I was four wasn't very cold, and the snow on the ground wasn't as thick as the year before.
I followed behind mom, leaving one footprint after another in the snowy winter landscape, with the snow creaking beneath my feet. Mountains, water, sky, and earth all were a single color stretching as far as the eye could see.
Grandma was sitting on the kang bed, legs crossed, leaning against the window, holding a small knife in her right hand and an apple in her left. Half of the apple's peel was removed, the exposed flesh had turned black, and the other half of the peel hung suspended in the air, motionless like grandma.
Mother's cries were earth-shattering. The droplets of water on the windowpane shook together and fell.
As if joining Mother in a silent cry.
In a daze, I heard grandma calling me.
I always felt grandma whispering in my ear, "Stay safe and sound..."
I'm not sure how much time passed. Dizzily, I felt myself being wheeled into another ward. As the anesthesia wore off, the lean meat that had been glued together began to contract, the fatty tissue that had been compressed started to expand, and the skin that had been stitched shut began to pulse.
Inside my bones, it felt as if there was a gasp of air, creaking and groaning. Only then did I realize how excruciating the pain of being peeled and cut was.
I realized how much it hurt. So much. But I closed my eyes and said nothing.
Because I remembered, I had cried once.
That time, I kept shouting, "It hurts so much." I shouted many times, but no one responded. I remember shouting as loudly as I could, calling out, "Dad, Mom," but they didn't come.
I stumbled around, searching for Dad and Mom. I don't know how long I cried and ran before I finally found mom. I cried to her, "Mom, it hurts so much."
But the comfort I imagined never came. I don't know whether it was dad or mom, but someone said to me, coldly, "Your sister is suffering a thousand times more than you are, and she hasn't cried. Why are you crying?"
"Stop crying, okay?"
Yes, why am I crying?
Sister is in a thousand times more pain than I am, why am I crying?
But it hurts so much, does Sister hurt as much as I do?
I don't know, I only know that Sister is in pain, and I am too.
I only know that after that, I never cried out in pain again.
Suddenly, a pair of warm hands pulled me back from those vague yet vivid memories.
The nurse who hung the IV was a very young woman. She held the miniature "mosquito water pump" and probed my hand repeatedly, but didn't actually insert it.
Just as she was about to insert it, my hand involuntarily pulled back.
She missed.
