My Mother's Voice Comes on the Autumn Wind

October 18th, Saturday. I came home from school. That night as I slept at home, I had a dream - I dreamed of my mother again. This dream was basically similar to the two in September: still the scene of my mother struggling in pain at her deathbed. Thirteen years have passed, and the psychological trauma my mother's death brought me seemed to be awakened once more; I dreamed of her three times in a row.

That morning, the mother of a child with neuroblastoma came to Beijing looking for me. She had traveled from Guangdong to the North, having just visited Shengjing Hospital in Shenyang - the most famous hospital in China for treating neuroblastoma - and then, travel-worn, came straight to Beijing to find me. She had been referred to me by the parents of other neuroblastoma children she knew. After we met, I roughly learned about her child's condition.

The condition was not optimistic; the local hospital in Guangdong had already given up on the child. Fortunately, Shengjing Hospital had agreed to take him. The child's family had basically also given up on him, but the mother persistently sought medical care. In her resolute face I saw the shadow of my own mother. I said to her: I understand your feelings very well; if it were I who was ill, my mother would be just as persistent as you.

These words were like a tear-jerker; the mother could not stop her tears, and my own heart was also infinitely sorrowful. After she left, I walked the streets of Beijing in the bleak autumn wind, sunk in gloom. I remembered how, when I was ill and heartbroken in the past, my mother would hold my hand as I was racked with pain, watching me with tears in her eyes and comforting me.

The love mothers everywhere have for their children is basically the same. I promised this child's mother that I would work together with the doctors at Shengjing Hospital to do my best to help her child. The most heartbreaking thing in the world is for parents to know they are about to lose their own flesh and blood. The greatest meaning of medicine is to hold on to love as long as possible; losing love is the most painful thing in the human world.

In the past, when I encountered such situations, I would have wanted to decline. One day, a young mother said to me that in different places she had met three unrelated people connected to neuroblastoma, and they had all unanimously recommended that she come to me. If I didn't receive her, it would be a lifelong regret, an obstacle she could never get past. If I helped her child but the child could not be saved, she could at least leave with no regrets. Since then, I no longer lightly refuse this desperate group.

Neuroblastoma is the king of childhood cancers, with an extremely high mortality rate. This disease plunges a group of young mothers into extreme grief and fear. Ten years ago, I was researching cancer and nervous system diseases, because my mother had suffered terribly from both. After I happened to encounter neuroblastoma, I formed an indissoluble bond with neuroblastoma patients and their parents.

This disease not only destroys a group of children, but also destroys a group of young people who have just become parents. These young people generally haven't yet established themselves in society; their economic foundation is weak, and their inner strength is not yet enough. But life forces them to face this cruel, merciless fate; the innate love of father and mother makes them mature and strong day by day. In this group, we can see the most primitive human nature, and especially in those young mothers we can see the deepest love on earth. This love has even lost its rationality, but it is deeply moving.

A mother will always be our guardian angel; even after she goes to heaven, she still guards us in our hearts. A person who has once been nurtured by a mother's love is unlikely to truly collapse for the rest of their life. Sometimes when I am educating my own child, my wife acts protectively by my side; whether what she says is reasonable or not, in those moments I yield to her. This is the most beautiful instinct of women, and it is why women are so extraordinary. Without the shelter of a mother's love, our lives would have far fewer happy experiences.

What drives me to give up higher-income business and, at this age, retread the path of a medical student, is my mother's deep love for me. This love does not disappear with my mother's death; the countless beautiful memories she left behind have always nourished my soul. But after all these years of storms, I have gradually come to understand that medicine's role is truly too limited; many times we are powerless in front of patients. The greatest value of a doctor may lie in giving patients and their families a little hope and comfort in desperate moments. That bit of hope and comfort can help people overcome the fear brought by illness.

In The Silence of the Lambs, the heroine Clarice Starling can never forget the cry of the lamb she played with as a child as it was led to the slaughterhouse; that cry stirred in her a protective instinct toward victims. I too can never forget everything my mother suffered at her deathbed; my mother's experience also stirred in me a protective instinct toward those who share her affliction.

Life is a journey that is neither very long nor very short. Each of us may have a direction on this journey; perhaps this is the direction of the life path destined for me.