Essay by Ada

As the camp comes to an end it is not uncommon to find inspired writers presenting an essay to the free talk group.  Following are essays from Ada, Iris, Mary and Susan.

The Most Important Person in My Life

By Ada Yu Yanxia

When it comes to the most important person in my life, my father’s image always occurs in my mind.

My father was just an ordinary man of medium height, neither rich nor influential, but he’s the best father in my heart. However, I won’t have the chance to love him and respect him anymore, because he left us forever on the April’s Day in 2010 – the biggest and worst joke ever played on my family that special day.

As a veteran driver for more than 40 years, he had a record of safe driving for millions of kilometres. He’s a good father and a good guide in my life, although he was seldom at home before he became a laid-off worker in 1998. Up till now, the dribs and drabs of my life with my father are still vivid in my mind. My mother always tells me that it was my father who tried his best to save our lives when I was born of a difficult labor and into a poor working family. Anyway, we had a happy family life all the time.

I’d never learnt to play any instrument or enrolled in any interest class when I was a child, but my father would try to take me out whenever he could on his business trips, which helped broaden my vision a lot. He used to be a frugal person, and did what he could to save money and help finance the education of his children as well as taking good care of his parents and siblings in the countryside.

Besides, he had always been a kind and warm-hearted person in his 62-year-long life. He often helped his neighbors, friends, colleagues or even strangers. Sometimes I would discourage him since I thought it would take him too much time, but he always smiled and said the world needed more warm hearts. In my mind, he's just like an living Lei Feng then. Even when he was not well, he would do everything as far as possible to help ease my burden of work. This impressed me a lot and I would follow his good example as much as I can.

My father loved reading newspapers and watching TV news. In fact, this was his habit after he joined the army in 1965. He said this would help him keep up with the world.

On the other hand, my father was strict with my brother and me while we were growing. From time to time, he would remind us of his stories in the army. He always taught us to be good, to be hard-working and to be honest. The most important of all, we must learn to be somebody good to the society.

My father loved his family, and he loved his work better. Some of his colleagues even called him a workaholic or a crazy one. As a result, he didn’t enjoy good health. When I found that his hair turned white overnight a week after he was transferred from Zhuhai to Guangzhou for hospitalization and treatment, I was so frightened and worried that something unlucky would happen. The tragic happened almost two months later. He didn’t leave many words at his last moment, since he couldn’t speak much with so many tubes on his body as the assisted respiration. Anyway, I knew from his eyes that he would like to stay a little longer with us, and give all the love he could to us.