By a practitioner

(Clearwisdom.net)

During the Great Cultural Revolution in China, when I was only eight months old, my 22-year-old father was wronged, was labeled as an "active counterrevolutionary" and sent to a forced labor jail, just because he insisted on saying the truth. I had passed five years of my childhood with no memory of my father, although I still felt happy and glad. My mother and I depended on each other for survival and she suffered a lot mentally and physically to make me feel happy. My cousin, who is of the same age as I, then always said with admiration, "I really hope that my mom would be like your mom holding me when I am sleeping. Your mom treats you really nicely."

As the wife of an labeled "active counterrevolutionary," mom was in a very hard situation. From my memory, she was transferred to a farm to feed pigs and cattle. Now, in recalling my lonely mom sitting under the mosquito netting, hearing the hum of dozens or even hundreds of mosquitoes, and continuously moving my young and tender hands and feet from the netting, I remember seeing that the tears on her young and beautiful face never dried up.

Back then, my mom's monthly salary was very little. At the end of each month, she would borrow money from our relatives or neighbors for us to get throuhg the days before payday. However, she always bought seven apples each week and gave me one every day while she had never tasted a bite herself. With my mom's painstaking and selfless care, I was heading for the sixth year of my childhood, free from all anxieties.

In this year, my father was rehabilitated and released. On the night he came home, I ran behind my mom's back to hide myself from him, who I regarded as a stranger. My mom said to me, "Come on and call him 'daddy'." I felt badly puzzled. What kind of person is a 'daddy'? From that time on, my dreamlike, beautiful childhood was finished.

My mother could not forgive my father for bringing her a terrifying and humiliating life for five years and insisted on getting divorced from my father. This made my father almost collapse since for those long years, his wife and daughter were all that he had. In striving for the right to foster me, their relationship shattered and they became enemies. In too much fear that she might lose me, my mother described my father as a scary and dangerous mental patient, asking me to keep myself away from this dangerous person and not to talk with him.

I did it one hundred percent according to what my mom said. The gaze full of strange fear, and even hatred, from his six-year-old daughter completely destroyed my father's willpower. Although he never yielded to the beatings that was too horrible to remember yet still was full of hope in life when he was in the forced-labor camp, he now thought of committing suicide. However, it was only after I was twenty years old, that I had gradually understood my father's heartbreakingly sad cry.

For a long time, I could not forgive my mother. Regret had been constantly torturing me. My biting words made her feel remorseful, uneasy, and painful. My "being ungrateful" was a cut and pain in my mother's heart that could not be cured. In this cycle of contention between love and complaint, mom and I both lived in grief and fatigue.

Now that I'm married, I have my own husband and child. My mom and I both learned to avoid recollection of the past. However, I knew that there was always a bleeding wound deep in the bottom of my heart. It was not until I practiced Falun Gong that I have gotten a completely new understanding of feeling gratitude versus resentment among people. Unconsciously, the pains hidden deeply in my heart were disappearing.

In 1999, Jiang initiated a movement to eradicate Falun Gong. Practicing "Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Tolerance" and numbering up to one hundred million, my fellow practitioners and I have been put in a situation similar to that of my father during his time. Every moment of every day, we are forced to make our choice between "giving up our right to say the truth" and "having our families broken up and ruined." The very tragedy that once happened in our own family is now happening in hundreds of thousands of families again.

We have seen for ourselves that to insisting on pursuing their belief of "Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Tolerance", countless mothers have been taken away from their babies who are crying for food, never to return. Some of them have escaped and travel around in self-imposed homelessness [for the protection of their family] for years and can barely recognize their own children when finally seeing them in person. Many mothers were forced to abort their unborn babies. Many others suffered family members' abuse and threats of violence since their family members didn't understand them. I have totally understood and forgiven my mother, and also have understood and forgiven countless people who had done some deeds troubling their conscience. I really and profoundly understand that in those years the tragedy of our family is the tragedy of all Chinese people's families under this evil autocracy. During the four years of continuous persecution, my mother has been shedding tears for me. However, she is no longer so fragile and complaining as she was in those early years and she even said to me, "No worry. It will glitter as long as it is a piece of gold. I will use my way to let more people know everything you have suffered."

I feel very happy for my mother's bravery. When Mothers' Day is here, I want to honestly tell her "Thank you" and, at the same time, apologize to her. Mom, please forgive me for not making allowances, from your perspective, for what you had done because of your helplessness and pain. Thank you for your right choice in conflict between righteousness and evil. At the same time, I want to also present my blessing to all the mothers who practice Falun Gong and all the mothers who have family members practicing Falun Gong.

I want to offer my blessing to all the mothers in China and wish them well in maintaining their righteous and kind hearts in supporting a hundred million good people, many of whom were tortured and killed just because they want to safeguard "Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Tolerance." Don't do anything that will trouble your conscience before the seemingly powerful evil people. All mothers! In order to make our children able to avoid living in horror, with lies and blood, let us join our hands to safeguard "Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Tolerance."

Posting date: 5/11/2003
Original article date: 5/10/2003
Category: Open Forum
Translated on 5/8/2003
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2003/5/3/49391.html

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