Chapter 13 The fifth person I met in heaven

White.Only white.There is no earth, no sky, no horizon between the lands.There is only a piece of pure and quiet whiteness, like the deepest snow falling in the quietest dawn, silent and silent. Eddie was all white at a glance; all he heard was the sound of his labored breathing and the echo of his breathing.He inhaled, and heard a louder inhalation; he exhaled, and another exhalation followed. Eddie squeezed his eyes shut.The silence is all the more unbearable when you know you cannot break the silence.Eddie knew now that the silence was unbreakable.His wife is gone.He wanted so much to stay by her side, even for a minute, half a minute, or five seconds, but he couldn't reach out to grab her, call her, wave to her, or even look at her picture.He felt as if he had fallen down several flights of stairs and was paralyzed at the bottom step.His heart was empty.He was lifeless.He just hung limply in this space, lifeless, as if hanging on a hook, as if all the bodily fluids in his body had come out of the holes in his body.

He might have been hanging here for a day, or a month.It could also be a century old. He didn't wake up until a small but lingering sound sounded, and opened his heavy eyelids.He has been to four places in heaven and met four people, each of them appeared in a miraculous way, but he felt that the situation in front of him was very different. The vibration of the sound came again, louder this time.Eddie clenched his fists out of a lifelong defensive instinct, only to find a cane in his right hand.His arms were covered with patches of age spots, and his fingernails were small and yellow.His bald legs were covered with red rashes of shingles from his last few weeks on earth.He turned his head away from looking at his old appearance.As far as human algorithms are concerned, his body is already like a candle in the wind.

Now the voice came again, high-pitched, with intermittent screams.Eddie had heard the voice in nightmares at night when he was alive, and the memory made him tremble: the village, the fire, Smitty, and the voice that never came when he tried to speak. A long, sharp gurgling sound from his own throat. He gritted his teeth, as if by doing so he could block the voice.And yet the sound continued, like an unheeded siren: it went on until Eddie yelled into the white space that suffocated him: Who is it?What are you doing? As soon as the words came out, the high-frequency alarm sound became the background sound, and a second sound was superimposed on it. It was a loose and continuous rumbling sound, which was the sound of the rushing river. The white world in front of me shrank into one Spots of light reflected on the sparkling water.The ground appeared under Eddie's feet.His cane touched something solid.He stood high on an embankment, and the mist brought a moist glow to his skin as the breeze blew across his face.He looked down, saw in the river the source of the haunting scream, and was relieved, yet he blushed like a man who clutches a bat only to find out no one has broken into his home man.This sound, this screaming, whistling, longing, random shouting, turned out to be just a cacophony of children's shouts at play: thousands of children were playing in the river, splashing water and screaming, laughing innocently. .

Is this what I've been dreaming about?he thought.Has it always been this way?Why this?He looked at the small bodies, some bouncing around, some wading through the water, some carrying buckets, and some rolling on the high grass.He noticed the peaceful atmosphere in the scene before him, not seeing the usual scenes of children playing.He also noticed something else.No adults.Not even teenagers.Here are all young children with dark wood-colored skin. They seem to take care of themselves and no one takes care of them. A large white boulder caught Eddie's eye.Standing on the boulder was a thin little girl, alone, facing Eddie.She gestured with both hands and waved to him.He hesitated.The little girl smiled, waved her hand again, and nodded, as if to say, yes, it's you.

Eddie stretched his cane down and walked down the slope.He slipped.That useless knee.His legs didn't work.However, just as he was about to fall to the ground, he felt a sudden gust of wind blowing straight at his back, and he moved forward quickly, standing upright: then, he stood in front of a little girl like this, as if he Stand there all the time. ◇◇◇ Today is Eddie's birthday He is fifty-one years old.Today is Saturday.First birthday without Margaret.He brewed decaffeinated coffee in a paper cup and served it with two slices of toast with margarine.For years after his wife's car accident, Eddie didn't want to celebrate his birthday.He said: Why must I remember this day?But Margaret was very insistent.She baked cakes, invited friends over, and made sure to buy a bag of toffee every year and tie a ribbon around the top of the bag.

You can't leave your birthday behind.she would say so. Now that she's gone, Eddie tries to celebrate his birthday by himself.While working during the day, he strapped himself to a roller coaster, high up, alone, like a mountain climber.In the evening, he nestled in the apartment and watched TV.Go to bed early.No cake.No guests.As long as you feel relaxed and normal, it is not difficult to appear relaxed and normal at all.The paleness and bleakness caused by giving up became the color of Eddie's life. He is sixty years old.Wednesday.He arrived at the maintenance room early in the morning.He opened his lunch in a brown paper bag, tore off a small piece of bologna sausage from the sandwich, hooked the sausage on a fishhook, and dropped the hook and string into the fishing hole.He watched the sausage float and wobble.Finally, the sausage disappeared into the sea.

He is sixty-eight years old.Saturday.He spread the pills out on the counter.The phone rang.It's his brother, Joe, calling from Florida to wish Eddie a happy birthday.Joe talked about his grandson.Joe talked about a large communal apartment.Eddie kept hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm' about fifty times. He is seventy-five years old.Monday.He put on his glasses and looked up the maintenance report.He found out that someone hadn't come to work the night before, and noticed that Wiggly and a Bug's Adventure hadn't done a brake test.Sighing, he grabs a placard from the wall. The facility is temporarily closed for maintenance, and he takes it along the boardwalk to the entrance of Twisty Bugs Adventure, where he's going to test the brakes himself. performance.

He is eighty-two years old.Tuesday.A taxi drove to the entrance of the amusement park.He slid into the front seat, tucking his cane behind his back. Most people like to sit in the back seat.said the driver. You don't mind if I take the front seat?Eddie asked. The driver shrugged: No.I do not mind.Eddie looked straight ahead.He didn't tell the driver that sitting in the front seat would give him the feeling of driving, nor did he say that he hasn't driven since the authorities refused to issue him a driver's license two years ago. A taxi took him to the cemetery.He went to see his mother's grave first, and then his brother's grave.He only stood in front of his father's grave for a while.As usual, he kept his wife's grave until the end.Leaning on a cane, he bent over and looked at the tombstone, with many things on his mind.toffee.He thought of toffee.He knew that chewing taffy would pull his teeth out by the roots, but if eating at her grave meant eating with her, then he would eat taffy anyway.