They Had Only Each Other

She was alone on her bed, rubbing her legs. Her lower legs were swollen so severely that the skin looked tight. She kept massaging them with both hands, working slowly from one place to another as though trying to ease some of the heaviness herself. 

When she saw me knocking on the doors, she warmly welcomed me. Her accent was unmistakably northeastern—loud, direct, and warm, with the kind of frankness that made a stranger feel as though they had known her for years. I asked whether she was from Liaoning. She nodded, “How do you know? From my accent?” Then she guffawed and said, “Yes, I’m from Jinzhou.” She looked so energetic that I was surprised to know that she was in her seventies. She was already a great-grand mother. 

Many years earlier, she had raised her granddaughter. Her husband had died before her first cancer treatment, leaving her and her granddaughter to rely largely on each other. Years later, her granddaughter married and moved to Nanchang. When the older woman became ill again, her granddaughter brought her with her. Now the granddaughter was the one caring for her. Her granddaughter also had a daughter of her own. The little girl called her “Tai”—great-grandmother. Once, when the granddaughter asked the child who she wanted to save some fruit for, the answer came immediately. “For Tai.” The old woman smiled when she told us. The arrangement seemed almost to have come full circle. The woman who had once raised a little girl was now sitting in a hospital bed while that same girl looked after her. She spoke about her granddaughter with the sort of pride that made it obvious that this was not simply a caregiving relationship. It was the story of a family. 

The room was empty and neat, without beeping apparatus and piles of belongings. She told me that she had been admitted four days earlier. Formal treatment had not yet begun. But illness had already become an old acquaintance. Eight years earlier, she had undergone chemotherapy for lung cancer. That was when the swelling in her legs had started, and also when she had learned how difficult treatment could be. There were moments when she felt she could not continue. 

Then, unexpectedly, she began to cry as she recalled those days. She said in a trembling voice, “I even felt like giving up on life, but I continued the treatment for my granddaughter.” For a woman who had spoken so freely only moments before, the tears seemed to come almost against her will. She wiped them away and continued talking anyways. She had endured treatment because there was someone waiting for her to come home. They only had each other to count on.

Now, eight years later, she was back in a cancer hospital. Her legs were swollen for years after last treatment. She had not yet started her new treatment. She was still waiting for the doctors' plans. Yet her attitude toward the future was surprisingly simple. “能活一天是一天.” One day at a time. If there was another day, she would live it. Then another. And another. Perhaps surviving cancer had taught her one thing: living itself is a bliss. She would still cry over the chemotherapy, but whenever she thought of her granddaughter and great granddaughter, her smile would always come back. Living another day means spending another day with them, and that is enough.

She also did not seem particularly worried about money. Her family could manage. Food was arranged through the hospital's nutrition meals. She had also brought a small pot of her own to make porridge. “Millet porridge is good for my stomach. I can cook for myself whenever my appetite is bad.” She smiled. She had never used the charity kitchen. There was no need. The family had found its own way of making hospital life work.

The more she talked, the more the contrast became striking. On the one hand, she was tough. Her voice was loud. Her manner had the unmistakable energy of someone who had spent decades refusing to let life push her around. On the other hand, the moment she spoke about her granddaughter, that toughness softened. She had once raised a child who loved her deeply and was always supportive. That child had grown up, and then had a child of her own who was also loving. And now that family had grown large enough to give her reasons to keep going through another round of treatment. Maybe that was why her answer about the future sounded so simple: one more day, then another. Because somewhere outside the hospital ward was a granddaughter who had once been the little girl she raised, and a great-granddaughter who still wanted to save her fruit for “Tai.”