My wife played it for me one day. It was before our wedding. In fact, she loved the song so much she wanted to sing it to me on our wedding. I can't really find a translation that does justice to it, so I'm trying to translate it myself (and hopefully try to relearn a bit of Chinese).
It's a song sang from a woman to her husband, talking about how she will grow old with him, listening to his stories, be with him all the days of their lives. And when it's time to die, she'd want him to go first, so that he wouldn't ever need to feel the pain of seeing her die instead.
It’s a beautiful song, with really beautiful lyrics. But it wasn’t so much the song that touched me. Rather, it is knowing very well that every word sung, every feeling expressed in that song were things she’s always wanted me to know about her love. She has never been one to express herself in words eloquently. All that I’ve learned and understood about her love for me have come through years of trying to understand her actions.
She asked me one day how I knew she was the one I wanted to marry. Everybody seems to be asking me that these days. She said that even after all these years, she still found me hard to read. So I held her and told her.
It was when I knew in my heart that she was would always be by my side, through thick and thin, good times or bad times, in wealth or in poverty, in good health or in sickness. She’d stand by my side till Death himself came to take one of us away from each other. That was when I knew.
Perhaps all women who truly love their man would do the same. But not every woman finds a man she’d be willing to give that kind of love to. And not every man who receives it realizes its value.
I guess I’ve been blessed. That’s I’d just stumble upon a woman that’d turn my life around, bring a kind of joy and laughter I had never knew before, while so many others struggle finding the one person to commit their life to. And even among people who have someone, they struggle to find happiness and fulfillment from the relationship they commit themselves to.
Sometimes, people would ask my wife how she found such a ‘good catch’. They seem to have the impression that I’m some sort of well to do career man whose wife can afford to kick back and enjoy the benefit of her husband’s success. Apart from that being furthest from the truth, they also don’t realize that when we were first together, I wasn’t a ‘good catch’ as they defined it. She appeared in my life one day, by pure chance.
At the time, I had nothing; no money, no career, no good looks, no charm. I guess nothing has changed there! But I did one thing right. You see, she didn’t ‘catch’ me. It was I who never let her go.
Come to think of it, I still don’t really know how she decided to be with me. It was not like she lacked suitors. There were many others interested in her. But she stayed, patiently waiting and enduring while I struggled and learned how to come into my own as a man. Perhaps I should one day.
They say a man’s eligibility increases as he ages and climbs up in life society. They also say a woman’s eligibility decreases as she ages and the her beauty fades. I don’t know where people get all these conclusions from.
But I do know this; at the peak of her youth and beauty, when I was young and had nothing, she was with me. Because of that, when the time comes, when I am at the peak of my life and my success, when she has become old and wrinkled, I will be with her.
