Grandpa with PTSD

Feb 25, 2022 (edited)

I have never met my grandfather. Mom doesn't seem to like talking about him unless it's triggered by circumstances. For a long time as a child, I thought he was a wretched, timid and selfish little old man. As I grew up and experienced more, I seemed to be able to understand some grandpa and mother. Maybe, like this PTSD nation, my grandfather is also a PTSD patient. Such patients, the smarter, the poorer they are.

I have never met my grandfather. The first time I remember my mother talking about him was when I was in elementary school. There was a plane flying low in the sky, and we heard a clear engine roar in the courtyard. As I walked around the house looking for the shadow of the plane, I called my mother to see it. My mother didn't go to see it, but said that if my grandfather was here, I would dig my head under the wall, and shouted hoarsely to everyone around me, "Get down, get down..." Then the little kids would laugh their heads around him. I was immediately shocked, is Grandpa crazy? ! My mother said that my grandfather was not crazy, but he was timid and scared. Originally it wasn't, but since I went to the battlefield of the Liaoshen campaign, I was very timid when I came back. Later, I was scared to pee my pants again, and my courage was broken, and there was no courage at all. So when I heard the sound of the plane, I felt that I was here to bomb myself, and I had to hide immediately.

"How is that possible?! Mom, are you exaggerating?! Are you kidding me?! A child like me won't be scared to pee his pants. How could Grandpa be scared to pee his pants?!"

"No exaggeration, no joke. It was winter, wearing thick cotton pants. Your grandfather was scared to pee, and the urine flowed from the trousers to the trousers and the inside and outside of the shoes. The trousers and the uppers were frozen. Go home. After a serious illness, it took several days for the high fever to subside. After that, the spirits were not very good. "

Even after so many years, even when I was so young, even when I was so shocked, I still seem to feel a trace of embarrassment and embarrassment in my mother's story, as well as complex emotions such as sadness and helplessness. Yes, her father has always been the leader of the pack, always the proud father of her. In a time when children were at their best, in front of the little friends she faced every day and night, she was neither crazy nor stupid, but she behaved erratically. To be laughed at by children, it will also become their long-term joke. Moreover, this misbehavior never healed.... I think, for the childhood mother, this is the real "social death". Then, perhaps with the increase of mother's age and experience, the synaesthesia for her father's pain in those days will increase, and then there will be those pains. And this kind of helplessness about this big environment, and the future that she will face this big environment like her own children, is the source of her helplessness.

Continuing to ask, the thing about my grandfather being scared to pee is the first time I know that there is such a dark side in the world... Later, I came to a conclusion: ghosts and gods are nothing to be afraid of, and what is much more scary than them are people. In the future, it is easy to understand. I will adjust the order of the questions I asked back then, and continue to talk in chronological order.

to be continued