(Clearwisdom.net) A phone call from my family in the winter of 1998 informed me that my father was in a hospital. I could hardly imagine him, a person in robust health, in a hospital. I rushed to the hospital where I met my sister and brother. Father had had a heart attack. Bedridden, he spoke slowly as he related the sudden chest tightness and breathing difficulty just as he rode his bike past the hospital. He got off the bike and called my mother before checking himself into the hospital. The doctor said he had heart problems and told him to lie still and asked why he had come on his own in such serious condition. I shuddered at the possible, alternative outcome had the heart attack occurred while he was far away from the hospital.
He was 62. After he went home, he had many bottles of medicine sitting by his bed. He was told to avoid heavy manual work and never get angry. Father used to be a carefree person and was rarely sick. Following this incident, he became hooked on medications and became frail. He had been a Communist Party member for more than 30 years and was an atheist. My sister brought him a copy of Zhuan Falun and told him that Falun Gong was a popular qigong with miraculous healing powers. When he opened the book and saw that it discussed Buddhas and Taos, he said he didn't believe in those things. My sister was anxious and said many people had gotten well by practicing and urged him to practice it, too, but he did not want to.
One spring day the following year my sister told of Falun Gong practitioners planning an experience sharing conference and encouraged our father to go. He agreed. My sister and I picked our parents up and went to the conference held in a large auditorium where no less than 1,000 participants were gathered. We listened to the touching cultivation stories and were enveloped by an incredible feeling of harmony. During the conference my father felt a chunk of "stuff" drop from his chest and disappear. He instantly felt light and happy. My parents have been Falun Gong practitioners ever since.
They went to the nearby park every morning to do the sitting meditation. They experienced health benefits after two weeks. Their residence includes a private yard, so they offered their home as a Fa study site. Eight practitioners would come daily and watch Master Li's lecture tapes. My father played the tapes while my mother boiled hot water for everyone. It was such a wonderful environment. One night my mother saw a miraculous scene outside the window, and she called my father over. They saw two fireballs flying across the sky. They hit the window, making a loud clashing sound. At first they thought it was fireworks, but discussing this it at another practitioner's home the next day, they learned the other person also saw fireballs coming towards him. They decided it was Falun. My father told Mother, "Falun came to our home. We have predestined relationships with Falun Dafa." Mother said she saw a red umbrella-shaped dome above the practitioners in the park.
However, the police began publicly harassing practitioners in May 1999. Then we heard of police seizing volunteer assistants from home. The media spun a full-throttle anti-Falun Gong smear campaign. It felt as if the sky had collapsed. Terror filled the air; it was suffocating. No one dared to go to the park anymore to do the Falun Gong exercises. People stopped coming to my parents' home to study Dafa books. My mother was afraid and gave up cultivation, but my father's strong will and temperament made him step forward. He said, "Practitioners are kind and forgiving people; isn't that something the government should promote?" He mentioned asking several of the older practitioners to hold a peaceful protest in front of the government compound to ask the regime to change its policy regarding Falun Gong. Our family was worried that getting angry would hurt him and stopped him from going. My father did the exercises at home; my mother sometimes joined him. However, group Fa study was no more. My father became despondent.
Eighteen months passed. My father continued to do the exercises and spoke with many people about Falun Gong on different occasions. He maintained contact with other practitioners. One day three police cars pulled up; eight officers barged inside the home and rummaged through every room. Things were turned upside-down. They confiscated several Dafa books and an exercise tape. They took both of my parents to the police department.
My father refused to cooperate with them and had a heart attack from being overly emotional. They took him to a hospital where they continued to record what he said while he was being given an IV. My sister learned about the illegal arrest and went to the hospital. She demanded our parents' release and scowled at the police when she saw them interrogating our father in the ER. The police threatened to arrest her. Since they could not get any useful information from my father, they assigned people to watch him from outside the ward. The doctor whispered to my father and told him not to get too angry. He was issued a "Notice of Critical Illness" since he was in a perilous condition.
Three days later my sister took our father home. The police drove our mother to a forced labor camp after three days in the police department. My sister went to the labor camp and asked for Mother while holding our father's Notice of Critical Illness in her hand. Our mother came home after one week; it appeared she was traumatized. She had a blank look on her face when asked what had happened after her arrest. She could barely recall anything, saying only that the police drove her somewhere and interrogated her inside a building for a long time. They stopped asking questions only after failing to elicit any information they deemed useful.
Mother sobbed, "I've been a good person all my life. Why was I arrested?" She did not know that her children were interrogated while she and our father were detained. The 610 Office agents ordered officials from our respective workplaces to talk to us and tried to coerce us to write guarantee statements. I saw mother's salt-and-pepper hair had turned mostly white. We stopped talking about Falun Gong altogether and tried our best to spend more time with our parents.
Our father had two more heart attacks and was now taking more pills than before he practiced Falun Gong. Despite his poor health, the police harassed him at his home at least twice a week, fearing he would appeal in Beijing.
A few practitioners visited my parents, and my father told them not to come anymore because his home was under police surveillance. They stopped getting news about Dafa, and he could not read any Dafa books after the police took them. However, he never stopped thinking about Dafa.
Five years passed. During this time, floods, droughts, plagues, dust storms, and other "natural" disasters took place as if we were in a film following a script. My father's predestined relationship with Dafa was arranged a long time ago and could not be severed. One day, my mother suddenly fell ill and was rushed to the ER. IV needles increased from one hand to both hands to her feet, and yet she grew weaker by the day. One day, a fellow practitioner brought bookmarks with the words "Falun Dafa" and she told my mother to say, "Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good." Two weeks later, my mother pulled through the most dangerous phase of the illness. She was able to hear Master's lectures playing by the side of her bed, which she had not been able to listen to for a long time. She left the hospital after one month, and my parents resumed Dafa practice. Fellow practitioners taught them the exercises again and brought Zhuan Falun and Master's lectures from around the world. Father took care of Mother, and they studied the Fa together. Father did the exercises diligently. Mother could not stand for long, so she sat on the edge of bed and did the exercises as much as she could. Each time we visited them, we would see them concentrating on Fa study. We witnessed their physical changes and improved morale, which were especially great in my father. He threw away his medications and walked with vigor. He cooked three meals a day, and, occasionally, when my mother complained to him, he would always smile and never defend himself. The neighbors often saw him helping my mother as they took a stroll.
Several years have passed, and my father is continuing to write new pages in his life of Dafa cultivation. He cannot live without Dafa and he lives by Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. At the same time, he is validating the wonders and miracles of Dafa. In the fall of 2007, sacred udumbara flowers bloomed inside my parents' home.
