Bravery comes from compassion, which is respect and love for life.
These days, people are deeply moved by a woman who bravely sacrificed her life for justice. Our tears are filled with respect.
There is also a kind of brave people in life. That is, when your life is suddenly threatened by illness and death, you can face it calmly, accept it, and then actively deal with it until you let go.
More than ten years ago, my little brother suffered from leukemia. Acute leukemia is an extremely dangerous disease. Almost every day when I go in and out of the ward, I see people who were instantly struck down by death. In half a year, I witnessed those brave people. It was he or she who provided caregivers like me, brought spiritual illumination, and made me change. Gotta be stronger.
Some time around seven o'clock in the evening, a young couple would appear in the corridor, both of them bald. The woman is the patient and the man is her lover. The two walked from one end of the corridor to the other, walking slowly and talking quietly. The lovers were in their mid-twenties, and when they were preparing for their wedding, the woman was diagnosed with leukemia and was admitted to the hospital. In the evening, her boyfriend came to accompany her after work. In order to show his determination to stay together, the boyfriend also shaved his head. He told me that he would continue to cheer for his girlfriend during this period, hoping to wait until the day when the bone marrow matching was successful...
In a ward at the west end of the corridor, a woman who had just retired and returned to Shanghai came in that day. She was an educated youth back then and worked in a coal mine hospital for thirty years. She finally returned to her roots in her old age. Shortly after returning, I was diagnosed with acute leukemia. She is a doctor, so she naturally knows how dangerous the condition is. When she was admitted to the hospital, while she was still in good spirits, she invited several old classmates from Shanghai who were planning to have a party to come to the ward and meet them. She dressed herself up that day. From now on, before going to bed every day, she would dress herself up carefully, carefully put some rouge on her pale cheeks, put on lipstick, and use an eyebrow pencil to modify her two eyebrows. One evening I passed by her ward and saw her holding a wooden comb in her hand and patiently combing her long wavy hair. She told the people around her that maybe I would suddenly leave in the middle of the night, and I didn’t want people to see my unkempt appearance...
Hospitals are full of life, and they have also encountered people who have panicked and lost their minds. One morning when I just stepped out of the elevator door, I saw a young man squatting at the door of the ward opposite, holding his head in his hands and crying. An old couple next to him was grabbing him with his hands, trying to pull him up. A woman's cry came from the ward. The wife thought she knew what was going on outside, and was trying her best to shake the iron bed railings with her hands, making a constant squeaking sound. Later I found out that not long after the young couple had a child, the wife contracted leukemia. At first, the man often came to the hospital. Later, after spending too much money, he didn't get better. The man actually hid without knowing where to go. The old couple were his parents-in-law. They spent a lot of effort to find him and carried him to the hospital ward, but he couldn't get in...
Among the patients, the one who impressed me most was a sunny young man. He has been suffering from leukemia since he was in high school. He has been in and out of many hospitals in the past four years. The doctors and nurses in the hospital knew him very well and called him "Old Doctor". During his four-year illness, he exploited every opportunity and read professional medical books, especially gaining a comprehensive understanding of blood diseases. He will analyze cases of different types of leukemia and be familiar with the treatment options and processes of each type. New nurses often ask him for advice, and some patients' family members even treat him as a doctor for consultation.
His bed is next to my brother's. One day he told me that this was his eleventh hospitalization and that chemotherapy would be ineffective this time. This was the conclusion he came to after analyzing all the blood reports. Accompanying him day and night is his mother, who is in her forties. In order to save her son and take care of him, she borrowed money and quit her job. His parents were divorced for unknown reasons, and sometimes he would see two men visiting him, both coming to bring him food. He was as kind and friendly to both his biological father and stepfather as old friends.
That afternoon I finally saw this young man softly begging his mother to give up the treatment, telling him that the disease was hopeless. If he continued like this, he would only waste money and drain his mother's physical energy. If he didn't stop the loss in time, Mom's future life will be even more difficult... In the middle of the night, when his mother was taking a nap at the foot of his bed, the young man took off his oxygen mask. The next day, the mother opened the laptop her son had brought with him. There is a short farewell letter inside: Mom, be strong, I will bless you in heaven!
Who can say that this son is not a brave man?
Bravery comes from compassion, which is respect and love for life. (Xu Huifen)
