Returned from Mourning a Friend

On September 12, I traveled from Beijing to Shaoxing to pay respects at the grave of a patient who was also my closest friend.

He passed away in the United States at the end of last year.

By the time I reached Xinchang, Shaoxing, it was past five in the afternoon. What moved me, and shamed me, was that his two older sisters and his aged mother all came to meet me.

Because early the next morning I had to go to Hangzhou to see several patients booked there, his family nevertheless took me to his grave before dark.

We drove over an hour from the county town to his old home, a small village ringed by mountains. He is buried in the family graveyard at the village entrance.

We had to turn on our phone flashlights to see the road. His family and I crossed a wooded, overgrown slope to reach his grave.

Seeing that familiar name on the headstone, my heart ached. In my heart I said: big brother, I have come to see you. Standing before his grave, I lingered long, unwilling to leave.

Just over a year ago he was still bouncing with life, ambitiously hoping to build in China a hospital dedicated solely to cancer patients, vowing to make it the most humanitarian medical institution in the country.

He also hoped to start a medical-education institution together with me, once and for all sweeping away some of the dissatisfying filth of the medical world. He hoped together with me to turn effective Chinese herbal formulas, using modern preparation technology, into finished medicines that would benefit the vast number of cancer patients.

He had many more plans; but however fine the blueprint, alas, "he died before his task was won, and always made heroes' faces wet with tears." Now I alone remain, riding a thousand li on a single horse, coming to this deep mountain to sweep his tomb.

After sweeping the grave, I wandered around his village. Everything here is not much different from my hometown; the houses they build and the crops in the fields are much like those in Hubei.

He grew up here, and I in another village in Huanggang, Hubei. Both of us sons of farmers, we relied on our own struggle to save some money and establish ourselves in a big city.

With the same lot in life, the same ideals, and similar age, like-minded companions are hard to find; he was the only kindred spirit I have met in these years.

He was my other half, and I was his. He saw himself in me, just as I saw myself in him.

Sweeping his grave was like sweeping my own. He has gone, and let me see what I myself will look like after death.

The mountain village at night was very quiet. Only at the home of a villager where someone had just died was there the bustle of wind and music; the next day the deceased would be carried out.

Eight months ago, his coffin was flown home from America, because his family wanted him to return to his roots. The day his body came home, I rushed to the funeral parlor in his hometown to see him off for the last time.

The mortician had made him look as in life; he lay in a crystal casket as if asleep. His widow wept as if her heart would break, and I did my best to comfort her. Early the next morning he was sent into the crematorium; when he came out, it was a box of ashes.

He is gone: dust to dust, earth to earth. From dust, returning to dust. All the ambition, all the grand visions, no longer have meaning.

Another spring and summer passed; the weeds on the hillside grew cheerfully over his grave.

"What is there to say of death? The body rests with the mountains. Kinsfolk may still grieve; others already sing." In these eight months many new lives have been born into the world, and everyone still lives on, joyfully or fretfully.

I understand: this will be my ending too.

Watching his body turn to ashes, I decided that, once back in Beijing, I would at once sign the body-donation agreement. After I die I have no need for this body; if anyone can use it, give it to them.

Having known each other so well, though not blood brothers, we were closer than blood. We had leaned on each other as right and left arms; now that he is gone, I feel a certain desolation and loneliness.

When he was alive he always told me he was not afraid of death at all. Indeed, he never feared death. In his final moments, what was on his mind was a group of neuroblastoma children, not himself.

This older brother, so like myself, was all his life so loyal and true. The full stop he put to his life showed me the other face of life.

I do not know how the creatures on our planet lived and evolved millions of years ago; the human civilization traceable through writing and images is only about ten thousand years.

Archaeologists and paleontologists can see still further back, but compared with the earth's lifespan, the history we know is still very brief.

In the boundless vastness of time and space, our own lives are but a fleeting instant. Like a firework, gone in a flash. Hegemonies and grand plans, grudges and loves, all seem childish and ridiculous.

At 4:40 a.m. on September 13, I took the car from Xinchang, Shaoxing to Hangzhou, reaching the West Lake shore around seven and staying at an affordable hotel by the lake.

Over the next two days I received about ten cancer patients who came to me there. Their lives were all under threat, and the will to survive led them to seek medicine.

Then I hurried back to Beijing, because on Saturday I still had to teach my few students. Only after class could I truly rest and wash off the hardship of this long journey.

Last night I slept a deep eleven hours; rising early, I felt my spirit and strength fully restored.

I usually sleep and rise early, generally going to bed between eight and nine; I fall asleep extremely easily, usually within a minute of my head touching the pillow I am already snoring. I wake at three or four in the morning and, in the silence, read a bit and write something.

Today I slept until past seven; rising, I felt light of body and full of energy.

I thank heaven that at this age I am still not troubled by major illness, and have good physical and mental strength for life and work.

After breakfast I tidied my study. Outside the sky was high and crisp; inside, the study was clean and tidy. Reading quietly for a while alone in the study put me in a good mood.

I am not a Buddhist. Though I have read some sutras, being dull-witted I read them only shallowly. Though influenced a little by Buddhism, not deeply. Of Buddhism, some love deeply; I love but shallowly.

My work requires me to deal often with the terminally ill; their life experiences have made me deeply feel that health is the greatest wealth in the human world.

This kind of work has made my heart for fame and gain grow ever cooler, until it is gone. Perhaps what Buddhists call "externally apart from all appearances, inwardly no disturbance arises," and "taking the joy of meditation as food, filled with the bliss of the Dharma," can only be tasted in such a state of mind.

Death can no longer sadden me, but it makes me realize that my own life will be just as brief. Between one breath and the next, life may end at any moment.

Rising early in the crisp, autumnal Beijing, the sky was clear as a mirror. I walked past the door of the hotel where my late friend often stayed when he came to see me, thinking of the departed, lost in thought.

A line of a song came to mind: "People come and go, all are guests; only loneliness remains in the heart." But the thought passed in an instant. I know that my big brother, in the netherworld, would also want me not to sink into grief and waste my good time.

Sitting by the study window, looking out at the cloudless blue, life blooms before my eyes like a flower.

I have a joyful heart, untouched by fame and gain.

Cut off from greed, anger, and delusion, there are no afflictions.

Life goes on and on; the years are so beautiful, I will not grieve.

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