26 Years, every day, I always feel cold, this is from the bottom of my heart and bone marrow chill.

26 Years ago today, at the entrance of Longhua Crematorium.

The chimney of the carved dragon stood high under the hazy sky, and from time to time "boom", thick black smoke emerged, which gradually drifted and faded in the sharp spring cold.

I stared at him blankly, feeling that death was not the road to heaven in fairy tales. The road to heaven in fairy tales is full of flowers, and the chimney is so ugly.

The night before, when I heard of my father's death, I didn't cry. I wasn't as calm as his daughter, or even a child.

As a ten-year-old girl who always listened to adults whispering about which uncle and aunt she knew had disappeared, she had been waiting for something vague and clear. She had long known that her home would be broken and collapse.

That night my mother didn't come home. I took my sister and grandmother to look at each other. No one dared ask what would happen. But everyone had a premonition in their hearts that something must have happened.

It was eleven o'clock when my mother came back. There was nothing strange about her expression, but the light grey jacket had been drenched into dark grey by the cold rain outside.

She sent me to sleep. I turned around, and she started crying at my grandmother.

She said Dad died, it was suicide. Yesterday, I took an overdose of sleeping pills.

She said she went to Longhua Crematorium today to see him one last time. She stood in the rain for a long time, but they wouldn't let her in, asking her to draw a line.

She turned to me and said, "I can't go tomorrow either. Can you go and bring something to Dad?"

"Okay, Mom, I'll go. Don't cry."

I answered so calmly that I was surprised even in retrospect today.

The next morning, before dawn, my mother woke me up.

She took out a suit, a white shirt, a pair of leather shoes, a pair of socks, and packed them into a bag. She stuffed 30 yuan into my pocket, which was to collect my father's ashes.

Then she put me on bus No. 43 and handed me over to the conductor.

At the entrance of Longhua Crematorium, there are all children who are about the same age as me, all of whom are like me, carrying a burden in their hands.

The old man at the door beckoned me over.

I walked up to him and he asked me, "Who is it?"

I handed the death notice in silence. He took it, glanced at it, and turned inside.

He went in for a long time, and the cold bit by bit invaded my whole body.

I suddenly felt relief that my father was dead. Although I didn't understand the exact meaning of suffering at that time, or how difficult it was to endure it, I had a very specific feeling in my heart about life and death. It is better to die like this than to live like that.

I handed him the money. He patted me on the head and said, "Go back and be obedient." I nodded. It didn't feel like an old man taking care of a child, but like two adults reaching a tacit understanding.

The death of my father made me transcend the times, beyond the age, and even beyond the pain. At that moment, I completely lost my childhood. Such a leap in life level has made me more mature than any girl of the same age. Because I know that only by taking care of myself can I cause less trouble for my mother.

So there was a ten-year-old girl, holding her father's urn, who took a hard-seat train from Shanghai to Harbin for three days and two nights to send her father back to his hometown.

In Harbin in April, the Songhua River was not completely thawed. The first time I went out, I didn't know anything, not even fear. All I know is that I must complete the task given to me by my mother and send my father home.

I've always felt that life is really two big questions: love and hate, life and death. They come and go, and we can't help themem. We can only dominate the short period between life and death. Live it, live it.