People and dogs, both absent

The dusk of that time was different from the dusk of now, no matter from which angle you look at it. At that time, the grass and trees in front of the house were lush and young.

　　Even now, those grasses and trees still survive, even though they send out new branches in the spring breeze of another year, which, like before, make me succumb to an unwarranted love for another spring and a light-hearted enthusiasm for life without roots, but my heart will certainly not give me the chance to indulge: the sharp thorn of reincarnation is at your lips and will not let your enthusiasm go against your heart.

　　Life goes from verdant to senile, an unobtrusive process, like boiling a frog in warm water, and by the time you notice the pain, youth is far behind you.

　　Of course we must succumb to such a process, struggling to look cute or righteous, but it does nothing for the facts that have been formed. And my front door is not what it used to be, it changes usually overnight. When you get up in the morning and see what has changed, it's nothing but a sigh of acceptance. And you'll find that what's already there is faster to accept than what you expected to be there.

　　I can no longer find the old days in my neighborhood, let alone my childhood, which was a lifetime ago. Time seems to linger longer in one's memories than in itself. It is a wonderful thing that memories change the original speed of time, and with it the way some people exist in this world. Perhaps time is not the same length in the universe, it may have different scales in different things. Even we sometimes sneak back a few minutes or hours, and we never had much doubt about it, so the universe maintained its usual order.

　　My grandmother never cared about time, and now time has put her in another dimension. Maybe she was too busy talking to some old people about life and death to make time to think about time, which makes people die, but death is not a time thing. Of course will there be time after people die? Wouldn't an eternity without the existence of time be even more frightening? I believe that heaven can be just as tiresome as hell, and I believe that eternity happening to a person is the most unfortunate thing in the universe.

　　So my grandmother gave up living eternity at the age of ninety-two. She vacated her room and made a brief space, but soon such space was filled with other things, as if the space had never been torn apart. I was not particularly sad when Grandma died; ninety-two years of earthly life was enough to be envied. How many people die before they can taste enough sorrow: God's arrangements are sometimes so irrational. But I grieve at the speed with which the space she vacated was filled: what was so eager to erase her message from this world?

　　I often look into her empty room. I really wished that an unknown shadow I feared would flash through that doorway, but never, not even in my moments of grief and despair, did I have such visions. I had been deceived by many things: the clues I had searched for around the clock in ghost movies had not given me any insight. Those who died were so ruthless as to take a sip of Mona's soup, never looking back at the love and hate they left on earth?

　　Many years before my grandmother died, the family had a dog, gray and white, very aggressive. It does not like to bark, it is a practical person: people do not bark, creeping up behind others, a bite and run, like a villain specializing in sneak attacks. So people who come to my house are extra careful, looking to the right and left, for fear of being accidentally set up by it. My father was very worried about it hurting people, always wanted to sell it, but finally could not bear it, until it was very old, not interested in the matter of sneak attack.

　　The time of a dog is again different from the time of a person. Dogs age much faster than people. We cannot know which is the fairest time that God has arranged on all things, and perhaps God has gone through our consent, just as an insurance seller, who, after hearing him talk so much that it seems reasonable, finally buys it and finds out that he has been cheated. Of course people and God to play mind games, completely egg on stone.

　　So the dog is old when the grandmother has not yet old eyes. The dog grows up under the grandmother's feeding, but grows old faster than the grandmother. Of course Grandma did not know that time ran fast in the dog, she thought that many times the dog was fooling her: for example, at dusk, Grandma carried a bowl of leftover rice to feed it, and could not see it for a while, so she "dog-woo-, dog-woo-, dog-woo-, dog-woo-". Dog-woo-, dog-woo-" to call him. After calling it for half a day and not seeing it, Grandma got anxious and worried that the dog fighters had beaten it away, so she went around looking for it.

　　Grandma thought it would take her a long time to walk a long way to find it, but not far from the gate, she saw it lazily lying on the grass. Grandma was instantly enraged because it didn't take much effort to hear her barking from this spot, but it pretended to be deaf and completely ignored her barking. Grandma's dignity was actually provoked by a dog, so she was furious. Thinking that people are old and don't even care about dogs anymore, she became angry and a little sad. So she snarled at it: You dead dog, can't you hear me so close? I'm telling you to eat, not to do anything else.

　　The dog then looked up at the grandmother, really can not bear the old woman too sad, so stretch, get up and follow the grandmother to walk home. The grandmother saw that it followed back, so she did not care about its arrogance and rudeness.

　　For many dusks, the voice of the grandmother calling the dog trembled in the air. Her voice was hoarse, coarse, and always sounded angry. Grandma also called out to my father in this voice, and my father occasionally complained: like breaking a gong! But Grandma didn't care, as long as she could call him back.

　　Then the dog disappeared. Grandma called him for several days in a row, but he didn't come back. Grandma said angrily: It must have been beaten away, its lazy appearance is bound to be beaten away sooner or later. After a while, she forgot about the dog, as if the dog had been with her for so long. Grandma is not old enough to grieve over a sudden loss. Perhaps such losses are common in a person's life.

　　After many more years, my grandmother died. It was noon when she died, and the sun was shining brightly.

　　Years passed, and I never thought of her in a pretentious way. When I kowtowed to her at her grave on Qingming Festival, I always asked her: Granny, I am your granddaughter, do you still recognize me?

　　The sun is shining brightly. I don't know whose dog is barking in the distance.