Father's deep love

     After Louis’s question “Has anyone ever buried a human body up there?”, which I’m also curious about, something bad happened. The next chapter shocked me hard with the announcement of Gage’s death. I bet Louis must have been driven crazy. As the old saying goes “It never rains, it pours.” He just dealt with his cat, Church and now the tragedy happened to his son, Gage. Most importantly, Gage’s death not only brought Louis heartbreak and grief but also implacable guilt. It’s hard enough to bear the agony of losing a loved one, let alone seeing him die in front of you because you failed to save him. One second Louis and his family were happily playing in the yard, and the next second Gage started running toward the road where Church “once” ran over by a big truck. And then Louis tried to outrace Gage and pull him back. I believed the whole process wouldn’t be longer than a few seconds, but the way the author described made it a few minutes longer. Even though I thought this plot was quite soap-opera-like, my heart still thumped when seeing Louis throwing himself out as hard as he could only to brush his fingertip through Gage’s back and fail to pull him back. Then I thought the reason why this plot is so classic and used so often in soap operas is that as a bystander, we think it is ridiculous, but when it happened to us, it totally could tear us up severely. The guilt of not being able to save your loved one on time could haunt you for the rest of your life, and the scene of seeing him/her die right in front of you could replay again and again until you couldn’t take it anymore.

    The idea of burying Gage in that mysterious cemetery didn’t come to Louis’s mind until his daughter Ellie mentioned that her teacher once told a story about how Jesus resurrected a dead person from the grave and that she would get everything prepared for Gage in case Gage would also be resurrected by God. After hearing what Ellie said and after getting drunk, Louis started to pull over the whole thing. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. The impulsion of resurrecting his dead son became so stronger that he couldn’t resist.

    Then he started to do some analysis. Through his analysis, I saw nothing but father’s deep love and I was touched. Louis didn’t know what kind of changes Gage would undergo after the resurrection, but he said “No matter how strange or different Gage become, I don’t think my love for him will ever reduce.” What he said reminded me of my parents, though it was a little bit different scenario, what I want to say is, it’s impossible to measure how deep parents’ love is for their kids. A few days ago, when I was on the phone with my parents, I couldn’t help but burst into tears when they asked me how was I doing recently. I actually had been feeling stressed out for quite a long time but I never told them because I didn’t want them to worry. However, that day, somehow I couldn’t hide anymore, so I cried and I told them I felt terrible because I’m good at nothing and I’m afraid I’m not going to find a (good) job in the future. What they replied made me cry even harder. They said ”我們只想要你開心" and “找不到工作我們養你” I used to think they must have a high expectation of me and thought that I will get a really good job in the future. But what they told me made me realize that no matter I will be successful or not, I’ll always be their beloved daughter. Even though, I’ll still try my best to be successful, knowing I have such supportive parents is good enough.

     After Louis’s analysis, he thought there was no consequence that was severe enough to stop him from bringing his son back. Therefore, he started to carry out his strategy. First, he sent his wife and his daughter away to his father-in-law’s house so that he could do it secretly. I don’t think sending them away was a good idea. After all, sooner or later, he still had to explain to them after he brought Gage back to life. Everyone knew Gage was dead and the funeral had been held, so how Louis is going to carry out his plan makes me interested and curious.