Suffix X Read Bar Special Issue | Grandma, Gecko, Countdown to 60 Seconds | Talking About Death During the Epidemic

Written on April 16, 2020 , Taiwan.

 "If I die, will you take my inheritance?"
	"how many?"
	"Maybe not much, I don't have any money."

At the moment when the new crown pneumonia is roaming the world, although the cases in Taiwan are still well controlled compared to other countries in the world, when the number of cases in each country in the world continues to surge, and the number of deaths continues to rise, I always think that if One day I unfortunately got sick, will I die like this?

Looking at the international news that Italy is now the hardest hit area, the obituaries in the newspapers have changed from one page to an unimaginable dozen pages, the dead are secretly cremated in the dark, and the eyes that were so bright the day before, How did it suddenly become a lifeless ashes?

Sometimes I am afraid, afraid of death, lying in bed, lying in bed surrounded by night, I sometimes imagine myself, like lying in a coffin, I am afraid of death .

Sometimes I am very afraid, afraid of death, I will touch the hand of the person lying next to me to confirm that in the silent night, he is still warm, to prove that death has not come, I am afraid of death .

Like lying in a silent boat, I drifted slowly to the dark and silent lake center, I became a lonely person in the secluded world, my voice could not be heard, my painful cry could not be a message for help, I I'm afraid of being left out of the world, I'm afraid of dying , that makes me a helpless part, I can't do anything, I can't see anyone, I'm afraid of being alone.

And death leaves me alone, so I fear death.

I can't stand the endless loneliness.

I think of my grandmother, the only warrior I've ever seen in my life who has fought death. I remember that day in the Anning Ward, the day before she was critically ill, my aunt and I became the last group of people to accompany the patient in the left-behind ward. How could I know that on the next night, my grandmother had already become a person in the freezer. a corpse.

That day, I helped my aunt to lift my grandmother up and asked my aunt to take me to the toilet. After my grandmother got back to bed, she fell asleep immediately. The sound of my grandmother's symmetrical breathing penetrated the suffocating air in the ward and entered my brain. inside. I feel reassured that, at least today, death is not near, and our presence seems to dispel the shadow of death.

My aunt whispered to me at the other end of the ward, "Go to sleep."

So I quietly closed my eyes.

I slept so deeply and so deeply that I could barely feel anything, and I couldn't hear any sound, as if floating in a peaceful sea, surrounded by peace of mind.

until I was shaken awake.

 "Bo Xuan, get up, come and help me."
	"I'm in pain, I'm in pain..."
	"Where is the pain? Mammy, where are you hurting?"
	"It hurts, it hurts..."
	"Hurry up and call the nurse, hurry up!!"

The sound of footsteps came from outside the corridor, and then the door of the ward was pushed open. Two nurses responded to our call and immediately began to take over.

"What's wrong?"

"My mom said she was in great pain, could you give him a higher dose of morphine?"

Immediately afterwards, the doctor also came. Many strangers came and went in the ward. Most of them were rushing. Background decoration, I know I can't do anything about it.

"Hey! The doctor said that you are critically ill , hurry up, I'll call the second sister, please wake everyone up and come to the hospital."

"Hello! Brother-in-law? Come to the hospital, Mom is critically ill."

I don't remember how I got home, or even what happened next. I felt helpless. In the face of death, I had no choice but to have no resistance. For death, I could only All accepted.

I cook at home almost every day, and I help myself set up a cooking area by the window of the small suite.

After all the ingredients are ready, when it's time to start using the fire, I'll pull the curtains lightly and push the window open, lest I be poisoned by carbon monoxide in an airtight (not an airtight window, actually) space.

Saturday morning, as usual, as I was preparing to make breakfast, I saw a dead gecko clinging quietly where the two windows overlapped, as if it had just died, maybe a night? There was another gecko beside it, staring directly at the remains of the same kind beside it. I turned to Xiaomeng and said, "Look, there seems to be a gecko corpse."

He came over and approached the window, and after looking at it carefully for a few seconds, he tapped the inside of the glass window with the second knuckle of his index finger several times.

"What are you doing?" I quickly stopped him.

"I'll see if it's dead!"

I asked him to leave my work area, and slowly opened the window as lightly as possible, I didn't want to disturb it, and I didn't want to disturb it to mourn those who have passed away.

I turned the hash browns that day and stared at the two geckos.

Life, death, but the living never wanted to leave , no matter how much we did to him, even when we closed the window and drew the curtains, I still saw it still stagnant in the same position, not moving .

When I opened the curtains again the next day, only the dead one was left. For several days, every day when I opened the curtains, I faced his body face to face. I watched the body go from bloody to moldy. , and finally with the power of nature to dry, usher in the withering of the body.

After my death, is it also the same, ushering in the physical demise of force majeure.

And the living will eventually leave from our side, no matter how deep the bond between you and me is.

In fact, I am not afraid of noise. I like the person who sleeps with me in the same bed to make a little noise. Whether it is sleeping with my brother in the same room as a child or sleeping with my partner now, I always hope that he can make some noise, even if it makes me A little annoying snoring is fine, it makes me feel the rhythm of life.

I always go to bed late, and several times in the dark night when I can't reach my fingers, I suddenly can't hear my breathing, I feel uneasy, and I will count down the seconds silently in the thick darkness.

"One, two, three... sixty... "

Until I count to a minute and there is still no sound, I will feel panic, I am worried that the people around me will say goodbye to me silently under the cover of the night, I will slowly move my body and watch his figure Whether it still rhythms up and down in the dark represents the rhythm of life.

If I can't identify it, I will immediately reach out and touch his body or arm to check if it is warm, and then gently shake the other person's body, until I wake up or roll over and continue to dream, I can confirm that he is still alive, and I also You can sleep peacefully.

I sometimes wonder, what if the body I touch is already cold?

I have never touched a cold body.

 What is the feeling of the icy cold that gradually spread to the whole body?
What's the temperature like?
Is the skin still shiny?
Are the muscles hidden under the skin still elastic?
Are those eyes still shining?
Or will it be like a dead character in a movie, with brown pupils but lifeless?

I have no idea.

That fear of the dead body makes me tremble,
That image of the dead body made me feel uneasy when I was alone in the dark night.

Lately, as we're both half-awake in bed waiting for sleep to come, I've always asked:

"What if I get Covid-19?", "Will I die?"

Even before the pandemic started, sometimes I had a bad cold and I would ask between one cough and another:

"What if I die from a bad cold?"

Then he would laugh:

"It won't be strangled, people won't die so easily."

Every time I feel sick because of a sickness, I always think that I'm just not feeling well. What should I do? What if I'm like this for the rest of my life? Those fears of disease, staring at the borders of death, make me panic, will we just be just another number in the paper.

Death has never been a number . We cannot express the weight of this concept with numbers. How can we use one hundred, one thousand, or ten thousand on the screen or in the newspaper to represent death?

Death can't be counted, we can't say like teaching a child arithmetic:

"One death today, two more, how many deaths in total?"

Deaths are uncountable, the "6" on the screen is never six deaths, but "death repeated six times" , and every death that has occurred is unrepeatable.

I sometimes wonder, how do I want to die?

Did you leave surrounded by relatives and friends just before death? Or leave silently in a late night dream?

Every death is terrifying, and many more are unimaginable and unpredictable, and I'm even terrified, unable to say, "Maybe the next moment I'll die in a car accident after walking out of the coffee shop." , I'm afraid that it's a prophecy, I'm afraid that the moment when death comes, it happens to be predicted by me like this, I'm afraid, I'm afraid.

In the face of the boundless power of death, I bow my head as a servant.