(Minghui.org) I am 58 years old. I contracted polio as a child and one leg became permanently damaged. As a result I became unable to do heavy labor.
My father was our family’s main source of income. Later he had an affair and always picked fights with my mother, and beat her. He forced my mother to divorce him in 1998. We lived in a 3-bedroom apartment. The court awarded one bedroom to my father and two to my mother. My father always created trouble for my mother. He often locked my mother out, or in, depending on when he came home. My mother often had to ask for help from the neighbors to open the door.
Later, when I was an adult, my mother came to live with me. We made a living by selling fruit. Life was difficult and exhausting.
My mother and I went for a walk in the park one morning, and saw many people practicing Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa. The beautiful music and graceful movements captivated both of us. We noticed one of our neighbors there. She told us that Falun Gong has remarkable effects in healing illnesses and promoting health. So we joined in and began practicing alongside them.
Later, we formed a Fa-study group, where fellow practitioners from the neighborhood came to my home every morning to study the Fa together. The more I read the teachings, the more I loved it, and the more my heart felt at peace. Sometimes we shared our experiences. Everyone was diligent.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched the persecution of Falun Dafa on July 20, 1999, and our coordinator was soon arrested. The pressure was immense at the time, but neither my mother nor I wavered.
One day my father reported my mother to the police because of her faith. The police came and my mother clarified the truth to them. She said that she had hyperthyroidism but couldn’t afford treatment. After practicing Falun Dafa, her illness was healed without taking a single pill or spending a single penny. “With such a wonderful practice, how could I not do it?” The police asked if she had any Falun Dafa books, and she said that she only had a copy of the main book of Falun Dafa, Zhuan Falun. The police left.
The next day, when my mother ran into the community director at the morning market, she told her the benefits she received after practicing Falun Dafa, and the director said, “Fine, just practice at home.”
One day in 2018, my aunt came and told me that my father had been hospitalized, and diagnosed with uremia. She asked me to go see him. I felt a mix of emotions. For over twenty years, he had never taken care of me; instead, he often beat and scolded me. He never gave me a penny. Now that he was sick, the woman he had an affair with left him, and only then did he want to see us. My resentment welled up immediately, I was truly filled with bitterness.
But after calming down and thinking it over, I realized that I was no longer an ordinary person, I was a Dafa practitioner. Master said in Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun:
“Under all circumstances, we must be good and kind to others, not to mention to our family members.”
I decided to follow Master’s teaching, and went to the hospital with my mother.
He had been admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). My mother and I went to the supermarket to buy him daily necessities, and we cooked three meals at home and delivered them to the ICU. Five days later, the doctor urged us to find a hospital that offered dialysis. We transferred my father to another hospital where he was treated for three months. After that, he went to a nursing home. Since then, on the days he had dialysis, I would pick him up, and after treatment return him to the nursing home with my tricycle.
His dialysis catheter once became infected, and needed to be replaced. On the procedure day, dad scolded his sister, (my aunt) for not coming to see him. Mom tried to stop him, then he cursed her to be hit by a car. Mom just smiled and didn’t take it to heart.
My dad was often in a bad mood in the hospital. He yelled at the physician and the nurses, which really upset them. At night, he refused to rent me a mattress and I had to sleep on the floor. When the nurse saw me, she arranged a bed for me.
I am disabled and in poor health, yet I was still taking care of my dad. He constantly sent me to fetch this and that, and I barely had time to take a rest. I sometimes felt that I couldn’t take it anymore. And the doctors, nurses, and other patients in the same room couldn’t stand watching it, and told me to just leave him. A nurse once told me, “Your dad abused me again.” I apologized immediately. She told me that if it were not for me, they definitely wouldn’t have admitted him to the hospital.
One day, during the pandemic, the head nurse made an exception and let me go in to take care of my dad while he was on the dialysis machine. However, not long after he was hooked up to the machine, he wanted to use the bathroom. The nurse purchased a bottle of water, emptied it, then cut off the top, and sealed the edges with white tape, so that I could collect his urine. I was truly moved and kept thanking her. The nurse replied, “Don’t mention it. I am only doing this for your sake. Otherwise, I would have stopped his dialysis.”
On another occasion, after my dad finished his dialysis at 8:30 p.m., he couldn’t get onto my tricycle, and I wasn’t strong enough to lift him. So we sat outside not knowing what to do. It was past 9:00 p.m. when the chief doctor and nurses clocked out and saw us, and asked what happened. I told them that I couldn’t lift my dad onto the tricycle. The head nurse went back to get a wheelchair, had dad sit in it, wheeled it up to the tricycle. The four of us then lifted him onto the tricycle. It was late by then, and the young nurses didn’t want to go home alone. They called their families to explain the situation, and ended up staying the night at a nearby hotel. I was deeply moved and felt bad for them.
Dad had mood swings all the time. He abused the nursing home director, the caregivers, and even several other seniors. The nursing home notified me that they had decided to terminate his residency there. I had no choice but to bring him home with me. I knew well that dad had hurt mom deeply in the past, and I was afraid that she wouldn’t accept him living with us.
To my surprise, my mother agreed. She said, “If I wasn’t practicing Dafa, I would never accept him, let alone take care of him, as just seeing him turned my stomach.” But for a Dafa practitioner, things are different. We should follow Master’s teaching, let go of all grudges, be kind to others, and be good people. To be honest, it was hard for me to let go of my resentment toward my dad, but no matter how hard it was, I had to do it. So I brought my dad to live with us.
One day, my dad wanted barbecue, so my mother and I took him to a restaurant. The meal cost over 200 yuan. My mother and I had never spent so much money on one meal. We later took dad to a few more restaurants to make him happy.
People we knew always said, “He is such a bad man, why bother with him? You both are just too kind.”
One day in 2020, dad’s dialysis catheter was blocked and needed to be replaced. Since the catheter was located close to his heart, to minimize the risk, the hospital decided to transfer him to a major hospital in the provincial capital.
My dad and I stayed in a hotel near the hospital. At around 2:00 a.m., he began vomiting blood, and his face turned pale. I was frantic, wondering what I should do. No one could come help due to the long distance. At that moment, I remembered that I was a Falun Dafa practitioner, so I told dad to recite “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” Dad and I kept reciting the phrase, and after a while, he stopped vomiting. The next day, we didn’t go to the hospital. Instead we went to our local hospital for an X-ray, and the doctor discovered that the dialysis catheter had shifted away from the heart and the replacement could be performed safely.
I gave my dad a Falun Dafa amulet. He never took it off. During the pandemic, our neighborhood was locked down, and residents had to register and show their ID cards when entering or leaving. My dad kept his ID and the amulet together. The police asked where he got the amulet, and my dad simply said that someone gave it to him. The police told him that he couldn’t carry it. But my dad didn’t listen, and every time he showed his ID, he also showed the amulet.
My dad told me, “Falun Dafa is really great.” I asked, “Then why did you report mom to the police?” He replied, “If I knew back then that Falun Dafa was so great I would not have reported your mom.”
After that, every time when he received dialysis, he always silently repeated the Dafa phrase I taught him. If anyone said anything bad about Dafa, he would start cursing. I reminded him that he shouldn’t curse, because Dafa teaches kindness, and the Dafa Master was watching over him. He said he was so used to cursing, it was difficult to change.
My mother took care of my Dad day after day, year after year, without a single complaint. It allowed dad to feel her selflessness and kindness. This is the power and virtue of Dafa.
My dad passed away in September 2022. My mother and I bought 200 yuan worth of fruits for the doctors and nurses in the Nephrology Department and the Dialysis Unit, to thank them for their care and help over the past four years. They said, “Usually patients give gifts while they are still alive, but you still thank us after your dad passed away. You are so kind-hearted, you will surely be blessed for it.”
I am sharing this experience to express the gratitude from my mother and I for Master’s boundless compassion, and to bear witness to the purity and beauty of Falun Dafa. I sincerely hope everyone will come to understand the truth as soon as possible and have a bright future!