The way this man remembered his son for his altruistic act to save someone’s life, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
By the beaches of Gongliao there was a statue of a student wearing a hat, carrying a book bag, it was, a local, Guo-Hsien Su, he’d gone into the water to save someone who was drowning, and his young life was lost at nineteen. His father, Lin would head to the statue every single week, with a lit incense, spoke, to this son he never had the chance to see, to become a man, he’d done this for thirty-one years in counting.
The beach was located very far off, not a lot of visitors, and, Lin would tell anybody who would listen, his own son’s heroic actions, worried, that his son’s actions may get washed away from people’s memories.
not my photograph…
Su took his mother’s last name, was a last year student in the St. Heart’s Business High School, it was April 2nd, 1984, he was delivering some materials for his father who owned a raw material shop, as he’d passed by the seaside, he’d heard someone holler for help, he’d found that someone was drowning, and, without a second thought, he’d, leapt in and saved Tseng, who went to the same school as he.
Back then, those who were there only focused on resuscitating Cheng, after twenty minutes had passed, someone finally realized, “Where did the person who’d saved this guy go?”, after everybody else discovered that he wasn’t on shore, Su had already been taken, by the waves, his body was found on the very next day. The locals, the representatives raised funds, for a statue, to commend his act of heroism, with “Guo-Hsien Su, the Hero”, hoped, that the locals will know his act of altruism forever.
Cheng later on became the godson of Lin, and would visit him every single year, and, although he now has a godson, it’d still not taken away from the loss of his own flesh and blood.
Lin lived about ten minutes away from the beach, for thirty-one years, he’d rode his motorcycle, walked the pebble roads, the muddy roads, to offer a stick of incense to the statue, to commemorate his own son. And now, by the seaside, the nuclear plants had taken over, and, everything is now, different, but the only thing unchanged was the hunched shadow that would show up every single week to the statue.
Lin who is seventy-five years-old, as he’d started talking about this son who’d died way too young, he was still filled with mix emotions, didn’t know whether he should feel proud of his son’s act of heroism, or to sigh. He said, that his son was very kind, but, let his compassion get the best of him. He could no longer recognize his son’s picture taking of his daily life anymore, but, as he saw his son on the identification of his school, he’d nodded, “This, is our son, Guo-Hsien!”
Guo-Hsien Su’s younger brother, Guo-Fu Lin said, that back then, the photos, the news articles on his brother, his family had kept, but, to keep his father from recalling the lost endlessly, the documents were all stored, in the attic now, and hadn’t seen the light for years; Guo-Hsien Su’s sister-in-law told, that dad would go see his son every week, and on Memorial Day, the whole family would head out too, “although I’d never met him, I will let my children and their children know of the heroics of their eldest uncle.”
So, this young man lost his life, saving someone, and, he is remembered, by all whom his short life had touched, and, this father honored his own son’s memories by visiting him every single week, by talking to his statue, like he is still alive…