The Long Goodbye

Reality is a fragment of paragraphs, beyond which lie sounds that cannot be expressed in words.

I run like a shadow beneath the sun, with shadows following closely behind me. I plan to say some words, then pass them to the self sitting in front of the screen now.

When I respond to the past, tapping the keyboard with clicking sounds, someone tries to interrupt me. What are you doing? This isn’t the first time he’s asked me, nor will it be the last.

Recording everything, even though one can only understand the shallowness of words when immersed in them, I reply.

Back pain, leg numbness—these common terms found on bruise ointments make me unable to find a comfortable position for a moment. Then I can only avoid looking at the screen and keyboard, relying solely on years of muscle memory, lying on the sofa, typing out one paragraph, then another, then looking at the screen again to ensure most of what I’ve written is correct. This is my way of retracing my thoughts: my ten fingers become the intuitive parts, while my eyes are responsible for proofreading. I think people in the past didn’t have this luxury. Everyone spoke the words in their minds, then recorded them with voice recorders or something; or with physical pens, brushes, and paper; or something else. More and more ways of recording, and now I’ve chosen laptop screens, keyboards on top of them, and Chinese input methods within them.

Whenever I hear my father’s voice, I must immediately return to a running state. I pick up a heavy glass bottle from the table next to my father lying in bed. Mother says to heat it up a bit more, I turn around and say it’s the same as before, right? As I leave the room, I hear her say yes. From the room that serves as both my parents’ bedroom and the master bedroom to the kitchen, considering the twists and turns, walking quickly is clearly more appropriate than running. I unscrew the bottle’s nipple cap, press the button on the water purifier, the purifier beeps and starts making water, in less than five seconds, I press the button again, screw the cap back on, walk quickly back to the master bedroom and hand it to my father. Father says it seems like too much, mother says it’s fine, I say things aren’t like before, we have plenty of formula at home, and no shortage of water, if it feels too weak I’ll add more formula, same principle as adding water to flour or flour to water.

I stop and return to the living room, seeing him lying down with his phone, synchronously writing text here. Star Network is indeed a good thing, he says, I can supplement the missing chapters in the middle while you’re busy, after all, you have more than one article here. You didn’t like doing this before, I say. After not being a detective anymore, with free time, I have to record some things, he says.

The sun tilts, shadows beside me. My father’s sister and my cousin bring my uncle over. Through the screen, my cousin makes a phone call; after they leave, I return to the screen. Helpless? I mutter to myself, knowing this isn’t a question. If you’re talking about the illness, that’s indeed the case, he says while entertaining my mother’s mother and siblings and my cousin.

May 3, 2024. In the past, this time would either be imprecise or placed in an inconspicuous way at the beginning of some work or chapter. The top-left corner of the screen shows 18:XX, behind the phone is the shadow on the lamp. I raise the phone slightly, the phone’s lens shakes, the image on the screen like a panel from a comic. In that panel are my parents, my mother wearing dark red clothes that appear black in the dim light, bending over and patting my father’s back, his back covered in white clothes that haven’t been washed for days and can’t be changed. Today I did similar actions, except I’m taller than my mother, so when bending to pat my father’s back, I naturally have to bend lower. I have to bend low enough that while avoiding the reflex action of making the same movements as my father when smelling acidic substances, my head touches the upper arm that no longer has enough muscle and blood to provide sufficient warmth. I don’t press the shutter.

My mother’s other brother calls, I stay in the master bedroom flipping through books and my phone, occasionally repeating the above actions, and soon this day ends. I fall asleep at dawn, struggle to wake up in the morning, recalling my father’s life as I remember it, trying to write thousands of words based on this, but giving up after writing less than a hundred characters. Too much, I should write something else first.

The day before, May 2, 2024, was the day my father was discharged from the hospital. Discharge doesn’t mean improvement, it just became an option that allows my father to rest better. My father on the stretcher left the noisy, humid first floor where the ward was located, occasionally invaded by secondhand smoke, perhaps he felt more relaxed.

The driver who took us back from the hospital said you have to have a good mindset for this kind of work, I listen silently in the back seat, next to my father lying flat on the stretcher with his eyes closed. Disorders in the respiratory and digestive systems make him emit a gurgling sound, like the slow lament I heard many years ago. I turn my head to look out the window, moving my eyes, pretending not to hear the sound.

At the boundary between May 1st and May 2nd, within three hours, my father had already arranged his affairs; further back was Qingming Festival, during that time my father was more energetic than now, still able to get up and walk with our support; further back was March 9th, when my father felt the oxygen concentrator next to the table was too noisy, making it difficult to rest. So the 5-meter nasal cannula that needed changing every two weeks, the filter cotton that needed changing every 100 hours, the uninterruptible power supply in the study, the power strips for series connection, all arrived at home through expedited logistics.

Assembling the uninterruptible power supply wasn’t as difficult as I imagined: it was safe enough and simple to understand. After testing, I confirmed that even if the city power doesn’t supply electricity, the alarm sound it emits is enough for us to react in time. In this low-probability accident, the battery can give us enough time to wait for the ambulance. Enough time, he asks, what about now? I’m pulled back to May 4th. At this time, the oxygen concentrator, after that, still emits a low sound to the outside from the closed bathroom; the nasal cannula passes through a newly chiseled hole, its end’s air outlet hanging in my father’s nostrils. No power outage, no buzzer sound.

There are other sounds. I listen to sounds similar to yesterday’s, listening, then combining them, new sounds appear in my mind, and when I come back to myself, it’s already evening. Your ears are too sensitive, using them constantly will be tiring, he says, handing me a pair of noise-canceling headphones. I take the headphones, then put them back in the charging case. I want to listen a bit more, I say. The rain outside the window has been getting heavier these days, but it doesn’t cover up any sounds, instead echoing memories along with them in my mind.

The sea carries time.

At around 8 AM on May 5th, I’m awakened by my mother from the ocean sounds playing through my phone’s speaker. I turn off the ocean sounds, walk quickly to the room my parents have been using since I graduated from high school and we moved, where time and space are frozen in the panel described above, the lens still shaking at this moment. The lens focuses on my phone, where there are no particularly good news. The text on the communication software is clearly unrelated to my parents, but related to my few friends. The full picture of death isn’t as I imagined, nor as I’ve seen before. It always comes slowly or suddenly, but I can’t clearly explain the boundaries. I suddenly realize that in limited time and space, I’m extremely incapable of perceiving everything, including death itself; I think of not long ago, he said, all creation might be fear of death.

We all know, he says, death is not the end, being forgotten perhaps isn’t either. Not everything gets stuck at one point in time like a movie ending telling you, it’s time to leave, it’s over, because sometimes you decide the endpoint. Father was forced to decide his own endpoint, I say, this isn’t our endpoint, I still want some emotion mixed with time and space to be remembered by my future self, even though there are so many of them. If I don’t record them, then I’ll always desperately search for past fragments at some moment in the future, so much so that even from now on, when my body is at its most agile, my soul within it won’t have a moment of peace.

The moment of peace hasn’t come as usual. Father uses a voice I’ve never heard before, murmuring why he can still hold on after more than ten days. Seven days, he says, if a person only drinks water, then generally they can live at most seven days. He’s still drinking the milk mother makes for him, I say, he can last longer. Mother and I can live even longer.

May 6th, the first working day after the holiday, mother goes to work at school, cousin continues helping at home, I work remotely from home. The last time I worked remotely was in March not long ago, and in a daze, I feel the time and space I’m in now is a fold of that time. Work that needs to be completed within specific timeframes still pushes everyone involved, people can occasionally escape the quagmire of nothingness in their busyness, but when I lower my head again, I find it has already covered my legs. I can’t run anymore. Maybe you need to calmly accept all of this, he says, expressionlessness is also a way. I just need to sit in a corner for a while, I say, in a place where no one can see me, before that, I have to finish today’s tasks first.

Time passes neither fast nor slow. After waking up from the corner again, I confirm an unexpected message that a friend died from complications of cerebral hemorrhage, and the last time was five or six years ago. When that friend died from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, I was also like now, opening all my social software, searching for something called connection. Most people still won’t let sadness occupy too much space, he says, even happiness can only be understood by specific people. Announcement and display themselves aren’t that important, I say, people have connections to be called alive.

On the afternoon of May 7th, father passed away, mother chanting beside him. I think for a long time I’ll still occasionally think of all his actions before his death, I say, let me avoid talking about it for now; no need to say more, he says, you have no right to judge others’ heaviest choices, nor can you completely retell the reality of the situation.

Mother and I then go out to buy some things, eat some food after returning. Afterwards, mother takes a notebook, choking up as she notifies relatives in various places; I go out again, this time I don’t run, nor do I walk quickly, but carrying the selfie my father chose before his death, slowly stroll to a photo studio several hundred meters away. Not seen for many years, I recognize the studio owner at first glance. When I graduated from elementary school, or even before, I should have known him.

The owner also recognizes at first glance who the person in the selfie is. He looks very young, others in the shop say, how could something like this happen? I don’t want to say much, only saying, it’s been a while, sorry to disturb so late. It’s fine, the owner says. After simple Q&A, the owner tells me to come back tomorrow at noon to pick it up, I open social software to add the owner as a friend, then nod and leave.

I don’t often walk the roads back and forth at this time. Narrow sidewalks, crosswalks, a vegetable market not in business hours, winding alleys. I walk slowly, discovering that this place where I’ve lived since before university has no corner in the evening where I can stay for a long time. I think of when my father, after I graduated from elementary school, took our whole family to three first-tier cities—Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai—then returned home and said to me, leave this place.

You certainly know what father means, he says, getting into a university in any of those cities above is a physical departure. And anyone, including myself, cannot make my spirit completely leave this place, I say, but from then on, or earlier, I’ve split myself into two parts, one part staying at home, the other constantly splitting into more selves.

The so-called small-town problem-solver days weren’t as difficult as imagined, I knew writing articles and composing music couldn’t earn a penny at that time, but I wouldn’t give up any path to discover new things, because I also knew that once I stopped doing repetitive things, it’s no different from being dead. I choose to create things that don’t exist in this world. Whether writing articles or composing music, making games or still distant painting, I’ve always had bizarre worlds, using them to resist the nothingness of fading away.

My mother’s friends and some Buddhists come to our home, then Buddhist rituals carry us across the second day’s dawn. In the morning we go out to handle some miscellaneous matters—getting certificates at the health center, picking up the memorial photo at the studio, etc.—during this time I eat intermittently, then stay in the corner again.

Another moment of opening my eyes, I feel dizzy, time to supplement some nutrients. I put on headphones in my room, listening to the long goodbye I composed at midnight. I know that today’s popular AI creation might, I say, or has already, made more and more people unable to distinguish what’s genuine emotion; you use randomly generated looping guitar and bass phrases, she asks, then use external piano keyboards to properly break down rhythm octaves with arpeggios in minor keys, how much reality avoidance is mixed in; he doesn’t know, he says, he only knows this is mourning and farewell that belongs only to him.

The communication software on the screen shows three consecutive eulogies from my father’s friends, I express thanks then forward them to my pinned mother. I casually click on my father’s avatar that I pinned long ago, unconsciously merging that moment with the studio owner handing me the photo frame. I endure in my self-constructed music. Do you think you should, she asks, let father listen to the six songs you played for him during Qingming Festival again? He listened more than twice, he says, that’s enough.

Made it in time, I say, that’s sufficient.

She doesn’t ask what things weren’t made in time, what things couldn’t be done. Your questions are full of nothingness, I say, nothingness and transcendence are mindsets of escaping the world, but can never resist the corner of grief.

In the 24 hours after father’s passing, we cleaned his body, helped him put on the suit he chose before his death. Flowers scattered on father’s body, endless murmurs echoing in the room, fireworks occasionally sounding outside the window. While cleaning and dressing him, I thought I would feel emotions other than calm. Perhaps those murmurs worked, perhaps they could calm the unease.

The car carrying the coffin took father to his hometown. Here are his decades, most of my grandmother’s life, and also the place I’ve come to every winter and summer vacation since childhood. Father repeatedly told me about his experience riding bicycles back and forth to his hometown in the scorching heat. Although I find it difficult to construct the scenes he experienced in my mind, I know he must have also said to himself, leave this place.

Looking around, this place has remained unchanged for decades, still not changing as dramatically as the outside world. I breathe in time, slowly walking with the fields by the road toward grandmother’s house. According to my third cousin, grandmother, who only learned the news today, has already cried several times. When grandmother sees me, she has uncontrollable sobs again. I sit down and hold her hand to listen, tears rolling in my eyes as I see the figures who have sent away her husband and youngest son. Grandmother is a simple person, simply caring for everyone connected to her. Grandfather also passed away at that moment on that day, grandmother says. She remembers very clearly.

Second cousin makes egg fried rice and meatball green onion soup, calling me to eat quickly. After eating, I return to the ancestral hall, and after a while, begin chatting with second cousin. At this time, what we talk about isn’t important, we’re just like many years ago keeping vigil beside grandfather, dispelling the loneliness of peace. During the conversation, mother sits on a straw mat for a short rest, we occasionally continue the brief incense.

I walk outside for a while, sandwiched with the fields by the roadside. I take out my voice recorder, adjust the recording parameters, trying to record this place in another way. After a short rest, I return to grandmother’s house. Second cousin and second cousin make green onion egg noodles, I eat two bowls then return to the ancestral hall. I look at the memorial photo, not remembering when the funeral songs began. In the sound of gongs and drums, I belatedly realize there won’t be any detective novel plots here, there won’t be any reasonable and rigorous deductions or unexpected reversals. No one can naturally think the person in the memorial photo is no longer here.

Kneeling, worshiping, cremation, more than ten hours pass; the body becomes ashes, placed in a corner on the mountain. I see father’s face at the last moment. A thousand thoughts, he says, anything else to say, even though he biologically can’t hear anymore. I don’t answer with words.

After returning home and washing up, I put father’s hometown in The Long Goodbye.

— Written on 2024.5.10