Tomorrow is Tomb Sweeping Day, a day when the end of life will be pursued carefully. When the epidemic is severe, there must be many people who cannot return to their hometowns to pay homage to their deceased relatives, and can only send condolences from afar.
A year ago, the husband of a girl from the north, Xiao Jiang, died unexpectedly. The huge grief hit her like a storm, and she experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After passing the “unbelievable” stage, Xiao Jiang started walking, reading, swimming, and seeking help from a psychiatrist. Accompanied by her family, she tried to recover psychologically.
This is the story of how ordinary people struggled, dealt with bereavement, and tried to live with it. The following is Xiao Jiang’s story:
Confusion
On the afternoon of March 21, a China Eastern Airlines passenger plane carrying 132 people crashed in Teng County, Wuzhou, Guangxi. When I saw the news, I was worried for a while. About this time a year ago, I also lost my husband unexpectedly. I couldn’t sleep that night.
A year ago in the spring, it was a sunny to dazzling morning. Not long after I arrived at my work unit, I received a call from my husband’s colleague. It was very vague on the phone: “Xiao XX is injured, we are in XX hospital right now.”
Hang up and I rushed to the hospital. On the way, I didn’t have any ominous premonition. I thought that my husband had a bump and suffered some skin trauma. Or if the wound is deeper, just a few stitches are enough, and if it is more serious, it may be a fracture.
My husband was in the emergency room when I arrived at the hospital. His parents also came, but the family members were not allowed to enter and could only wait outside. I saw many people outside, his relatives, colleagues, and close classmates.
I asked the person who called me, “Where’s the injury?” He pointed to the position of his back. Xiao was injured at work, hurting an artery and bleeding a lot.
Everyone reassured me that it would be fine. But I fidgeted and stood up from time to time to look at the door of the emergency room, but I couldn’t see anything.
The news is that the person is in a coma, but has vital signs and has been transfused. Due to my lack of medical knowledge, I don’t know what that means, I just feel very confused.
At 11 am, the doctor came out of the emergency room and called “Xiao Moumou’s family”. I gathered around with his parents. The doctor said, “Let me tell you, people are dying.”
The cold sentence caught me off guard, unable to find the right words to describe my feelings.
My legs were weak and I almost fell to my knees. I remember that a few people around me supported me to the seat.
“Impossible, impossible,” I murmured.
We begged the doctor to save him a little longer and use the best medicine. When the emergency room door opened again, I rushed in. There were more than a dozen hospital beds with various patients. My husband was lying on the innermost bed, bloodless. The nurse was defibrillating him, and the other side was getting blood transfusions.
I took his hand, wanted him to feel my warmth, shouted his name, and kept talking to him. I kissed the back of his hand, hoping for a “medical miracle.”
However, it was all in vain.
After that, I can only remember two episodes – the patient’s family member who was sitting next to me whispered to me, “Cry if you want to.” Xiao’s mother Sitting on my left, I said, “I’ll never see him again.” I covered my ears subconsciously.
The moment I left the hospital, I screamed in the sky. It was a wailing, like a wailing.
Dream
I couldn’t sleep with my eyes closed the night my husband died. Spring thunder rolled outside, as if the heavens were also whining for him.
At first, I couldn’t believe he was gone.
He is in his early thirties, tall and tall, about 1.8 meters tall, with a burly stature, loves to play basketball, loves to play games, and is always full of energy on weekdays. Almost everyone who knew him commented on him as “sunshine, optimistic and upright”.
Xiao Jiang’s photo of her husband before his death.
Image source: Photo courtesy of respondents
The husband is a simple and frugal man. A week before the accident, he had just given himself a pair of glasses. This was because the lenses of the previous glasses were severely worn, otherwise he would be reluctant to change them.
Due to the nature of his work, he often runs outdoors. The places I go are often wild countryside or mountains. Every time I go home, my shoes and pants are covered with mud. Because of this, his body has always been healthy, and he rarely even goes to the hospital.
I can’t believe that such a living person has left me. It always feels like it’s news, a novel, a movie, or a nightmare.
As soon as the thought “he’s out of this world” popped up, I would break down into tears, shake my head hard, and even beat myself on the head.
During that time, I was so afraid of the dark that I had to sleep with the lamp on. Until now, my sleep still can’t go back to the state it was before the incident, sometimes it is difficult to fall asleep, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back to sleep for hours afterward.
I started to cry at no time and place, and I could burst into tears anytime, anywhere. The tears dried on my face over and over again, leaving trails of tears. I never imagined that people would shed so many tears and stop I can’t stop.
When I wake up every day, my first reaction is that my world is different, and everything he’s been through is an illusion. The sun was shining brightly outside the window, but thinking that my lover was in another cold world, I lay on the bed numbly and didn’t move.
I remember when we were first together, he once pinched himself and said, “Is this real? It’s like a dream.” In the end, he also walked out of my life in the same way as a dream. , let this dream be short, sweet and sad.
In the early morning of May 7th, I dreamed of him again.
In my dream, we were sitting on two sofas at home, he was sitting and I was lying. I kept crying, and he sat down on my side, pulled me up and hugged me.
In the dream he was wearing a blue T-shirt with a lightning bolt on it. I also hugged him tightly, crying and complaining that he couldn’t make such a joke, saying, “You know what? I’ve been dreaming this month that you’re not here anymore.”
This is the first time I have clearly dreamed of him since his death – handsome features, strong arms, broad chest. The dream is as clear as it really happened. When I woke up I thought, maybe this is him coming to say goodbye to me.
The hospital where he died and his unit are on the west side of the city. Since then, I have never been to the west of the city.
Seeing
After I got out of the hospital, I went back to my parents’ house to live with them and didn’t go back to my husband’s house until a month later.
The home is still as it was before the accident. His computer and headphones were still on, flickering. On the washbasin, there were eye creams and men’s masks that he had kept on the shelf. They were bought like crazy by others before the wedding, saying that they should take care of themselves.
On the bedside table, there is a handwritten card when he sent me flowers on the Chinese Valentine’s Day, which reads: “To my favorite XX (my nickname), you are my lobster.”
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Xiao Jiang’s husband gave her flowers during her lifetime.
Image source: Photo courtesy of respondents
On the chest of drawers, there are my and his drinking glasses, and a half a piece of irregular aluminum foil next to it. During that time, I got up every morning to take medicine on an empty stomach, and he poured water for me. When I took half of the medicine, I cut off the empty half of the aluminum foil. He saw it, cut it into a curved shape, and said, “It’s too sharp and easy to scratch.”
Once we were sitting in the living room watching TV, and he would occasionally put his finger on my arm or the back of my hand, write I and YOU, and draw hearts.
It’s all vivid in my eyes, and it’s like a lifetime. I lay on the bed where he slept, hugged his pillow and cried for a long time, trying to find his scent.
Every day, I will send him WeChat, and I will tell him everything I think of, and I have been sending it for three or four months. But the messages that pop up on WeChat will never be sent by him again, nor will he call me again – when a person who is with you every day disappears from daily life, the more advanced the contemporary technology and communication are, the more cruel.
The streets and alleys of our city also left many memories for both of us. Seeing things and thinking about people is a painful thing.
We first met on an early winter night. He was waiting for me downstairs in my house, and after getting in the car, he asked me what I wanted to eat. I had mouth ulcers in those two days and said not to eat too spicy food, so he took me to a Huaiyang restaurant. During dinner, he asked me what my hobbies were, and I said photography. When he took me home, he kept inviting me to shoot ginkgo the next day.
Remember we went to that restaurant again in honor of our sixth anniversary, when it was still open. But after he died, I walked by the restaurant once and found it was closed.
Neither of us have ever photographed Ginkgo. It’s not that there is no chance, but that I always think that Japan will be a long way to go.
A vow card written by Xiao Jiang’s husband before the wedding.
Image source: Photo courtesy of respondents
Facts
My grandmother is almost 90 years old, her eyesight is dizzy and her hearing is poor. When I went back to my grandma’s house for the first time long after the incident, she saw me and the first thing she said was “Why didn’t he come back together”. Fortunately, her eyes were not good, and I had already burst into tears without seeing me.
Afterwards, every time I went back, my grandmother asked him about him, and I used reasons such as “overtime work” and “business trip” to put it off. Once when she was celebrating her birthday and the whole family had dinner together, I raised a glass to wish her a hundred years of life, but she took my hand and said, “You have to take care.” I thought, she might have already known what happened.
Daily drips hurt the most. After a short rest at home, I went back to work as normal.
Before going to work, I was very stressed. I was afraid of going out, afraid of meeting people, afraid of going to work, afraid of sitting at my desk. I became more and more timid and found the outside world frightening and disturbing. Because the last time I was here, everything was fine and I could still talk to othersLaughing, now it’s a different scene.
I cried every day for the first three or four months of my husband’s death. At work, I often sit at my desk and cry. Our office conditions are very poor, one person is next to the other, there is no block, and I can only cry silently.
For more than half a year, my eyes have been swollen, and I have lost my spirits. I no longer take pictures, and my temples have added gray hair.
I envy the everyday details of other people’s lives. Because I feel that my right to live a normal life has been deprived.
I used to like Friday afternoons best. In the past, he and I always went to eat delicious food after get off work on Fridays, and sometimes even deliberately ran a little farther, to euphemistically feel more like a weekend. But I know this will never happen again.
Source: Zhanku Hailuo
For distraction, I started forcing myself to read.
During that time, I read a lot of books about life and death, and I felt a strong sense of immersion in each one. I read other books too, immersing myself completely in the plot of the book and not thinking about my own business. I read all kinds of books, except emotional books.
I remember reading a book about Iceland, and I remembered that before the outbreak, one of the honeymoon destinations we planned was Iceland, and I did a lot of guides and saw a lot of photos. So reading all the Icelandic stuff in the book made me cry all of a sudden.
To deal with my grief, I like swimming and walking.
When swimming, every time I bury my head in the water, I try to prolong the time underwater, so that the whole person is wrapped in the water in the pool, as if this way, it can produce A feeling of being “isolated” from the world. I like to go out for a walk alone, as if walking, I can get out of this thing.
Days go by. Later, his image began to blur, and even though the photos and videos were on the phone, he remembered like a person from a previous life. Even before the accident happened, I was a little unfamiliar.
Finally, I accepted the fact that he had passed away and stopped imagining that he was still somewhere in the world. Maybe yin and yang are like this? It feels so far away, so far away that no matter what I do, I feel powerless, and I can’t even think about it.
After half a year, when I heard that his grandfather was gone, my first reaction turned out to be: On the other side of the parallel time and space, there is one more relative who can accompany him. He won’t be so alone.
Restore
Spring is here. The leaves are swaying in the sun, but even if I bask in the sun and see the flowers in full bloom, I will not be happy.
Despite accepting my husband’s departure, the pain is still acute and tormenting me.
In my mind, scenes from the hospital often pop up uncontrollably. Watching TV and seeing blood is extremely painful.
My memory is not as good as it used to be. I have no interest in anything, I feel that everything is meaningless, and it seems that I can’t even laugh. People are always in a tense state and cannot relax.
I also became irritable. Hearing the topics and words that are related to him and can be associated with him, he will be nervous, even breathless, and want to escape from the environment immediately.
In this situation, I cut off all contact with him, and also cut off from my original circle of friends. In particular, mutual friends who have a good relationship do not know how to deal with it.
I only found out later that I was ill. These symptoms are difficult to describe and cannot be quantified. So, after struggling for eight months, I plucked up the courage to seek help from a doctor. On the eve of the National Day holiday in 2021, I came to Beijing to receive treatment from a doctor at a psychological rescue facility.
This is my first time doing psychological counseling, and I feel a little nervous. The doctor is a well-known expert in psychological rescue and crisis intervention in China. Sitting in front of him, I found that he was very kind. He chatted with me patiently, asked me questions and recorded my situation in detail. Eventually, he gave the diagnosis and I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
But the doctor said that because my previous life experience and my family of origin were healthy, and there was no other more complicated content, this would be beneficial for later treatment and recovery.
It was also through this opportunity that I discovered that counseling is not exactly what I imagined. It is not about treating the head and feet, but asking about the cause and effect of things, and asking about my growth experience and the status of my original family.
The one-hour consultation was quickly over. Finally, the doctor gave me two pieces of advice, “walking and keeping a diary”.
Xiao Jiang’s medical records.
Image source: Photo courtesy of respondents
In addition to the doctor, my family is helping me.
My parents are getting older, and they were at the age to enjoy family happiness, but because of my experience, they have suffered together.bitter. This year my mother gave birth to a lot of gray hair because she was worried about me.
I remember that on the eve of the National Day last year, on the way to Beijing, the high-speed train galloped past, and the scenery outside the window was still there, but I was not happy. During the evening rush hour, the Beijing West Railway Station was extremely congested, but my cousin who lived in Beijing insisted on picking me up at the station. Throughout the National Day holiday, my uncle also thought about me everywhere and asked me “what do I want to eat and where do I want to go to play”.
I know that for me, the grief of losing my husband can only be chewed and digested alone, with limited advice from others. More often, family members are accompanying and listening, but this is also a kind of help, and it is precious.
When will I fully recover? I have no idea. In the future, I still need several psychological interventions.
Looking back on these days, I feel that the early death of a loved one requires psychological intervention as soon as possible. Although everyone will react differently to this situation, there is bound to be sadness. If you deliberately suppress sadness and pretend to be nothing, it will easily lead to bigger problems.
I know that I will be in pain and depression for some time to come, but I try to see this as a low point in my life. Even after a few years, this incident will definitely be an indelible scar in my heart.
But I know I can recover. There will be that day.
(In order to protect the privacy of the parties, Xiao Jiang is a pseudonym in the text.)
Written by: Xiao Jiang
Producer: Pan Wenbo
Source of the first image: Zhanku Hailuo