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Last vows of honor

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-22 07:22

What would you do knowing you have only one day or less left in this world?

At other times, when nothing bad was really happening, we were not unfamiliar with hypothetical questions like this.

Many of us may choose to make good use of life's precious last hours to relish what we have coveted but have not enjoyed, or to bid a sentimental farewell to those we love and to those who love us.

Life, however, seldom allows for such pre-scripted endings, as was true in the Wenchuan earthquake. Numerous lives vanished the moment the earth shook and the buildings collapsed, without the victims realizing what was happening.

But when some of them indeed had an opportunity to make a last choice, their answers to that hypothetical question filled us with deep veneration.

We cannot hold our tears upon reading the text message a young mother left on her cell phone for her baby: "Dear baby, if you can survive, do remember I love you."

On the afternoon of May 13, more than 24 hours after the earthquake, the mother was found dead, with her knees and both hands on the ground, holding up her back as a shelter for her baby. On the screen of her cell phone, rescue workers found that last line she had typed.

The only consoling message we have for this great mother is that her baby has indeed survived. And we believe the legend of her profound maternal love will be carved deep not only on her baby's mind.

All words pale before the last words of Yang Yunfen, a 52-year-old retired doctor, who was trapped under the concrete rubble: "It is dangerous here. Abandon me," she told the rescue workers after the latter's repeated failures to bring her out. "You go and save others."

She once had a strong desire to survive and get reunited with her family. But seeing the rescue squad work hard but their attempts failing and putting themselves in danger, Yang decided to give up. To stop the insistent rescue endeavors, she cut her wrists with a piece of glass, and swallowed her gold ring.

Liu Deyun was lucky enough to survive. But he touched us with his short "will" on his left forearm: "I owe Wang Laoda 3,000 yuan."

The middle-aged worker wrote that with a ball-pen when he got desperate in the ruins and believed death was imminent.

He told his daughter that would have been his last wish, if he died. He said he just did not want to leave this world without repaying his debt. From the brief and simple sentence, we see a man's sense of honor that can make many of us feel ashamed.

As the sorrowful stories of the disaster unfold, we are hearing more tear-rendering accounts of what ordinary citizens did during the last moments of their encounters with death.

(China Daily 05/22/2008 page9)