Keeping that kindness cycle rolling, even after her death, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
I’d heard a knock on the door, after the nurse entered, a middle-aged man, with his eyes red and tears still came in, with an obituary, told me why he was here, “my mother died last night, before she died, she told me to come thank you and say goodbye to you……”, as I read the name on the obituary, immediately, I saw the woman as she looked, kind and gentle before my eyes.
An elderly woman of close to eighty, had been living with lung adenocarcinoma, recently, the cancer metastasized to her bones and her brains, every time she came to see me, she was in a cane, stumbled in slowly, the cataracts of her eyes, due to the electrotherapy, became worsened. Every time I’m done seeing her, she’d always begged for the compassion rice I had in my clinic, I’d understood she wasn’t wealthy, and told her not to get too greedy, and after I’d prodded her more, I’d learned, that in her village, there were three more households that are in worse condition than she had, some had bad children, others are, living alone, and there was also one who’d become, bedridden due to stroke too, every time she’d gotten something good, she’d dragged her ill and elderly body, delivered the goods herself to them, even to the terminal stage of her own cancer too. Her children always told her, to take good care of her own health and that is that, to NOT care about anybody else’s troubles, but she just, wouldn’t listen to them.
“Dr. Chuang, can I have three more bags of rice, for………”, her pleading voice draw me back, “oh! Surely.”, the middle age man explained, “this, was what my mother asked of me to do for her in her final moments, she’d told me, to keep carrying on giving to the poor.”, “If your mother sees you now, she would feel good.”, I’d patted him on the shoulders, “I’d decided, that if one day, I am to die, I will have my own son, carry on this, to pass my mother’s love down.”, he’d spoken, with a more than steady tone.
Seeing how much trouble he had, hauling the rice away, I’d walked alongside him out of my clinic silently, I lifted my head up toward the skies, saw a bright moon, the coldness of the autumn night air, gone suddenly, and what replaced it was, this surge of warmth in my heart, I’d started thinking too, on what I wanted to, leave behind after I die as well.
So, this, is this mother’s, final act of kindness, that she had her own son to pass on for her, because she realized that there are, many more who have it worse than she had, and so, she’d done, everything she possibly can, to help others in need, and, this cycle of kindness will continue to get passed down, from the son, to the grandson, and to the next generations to come, because this elderly woman left a good legacy of kindness, of giving for her own offspring to follow.
Life, the Obstacle Course 