A Bottle of Beer
My grandfather died from a stroke in 1976. He was quite young at that time; he was just 48 years old. All this happened because of a bottle of beer.
My grandfather worked in a newspaper industry, his job was to prepare breakfast and lunch for the workers in there. Therefore he finished work very early everyday. The very first thing he would do when he got back home was go to the kitchen, open the fridge and take the beers out. And then go back to the living room, turn on the television and then take a seat. He had about 2-3 cans of beer everyday. My grandfather thought that beer is the most important thing in his entire life, he loved it. If he had stacks of beer in a boiling hot summer when he came home from work, my grandfather felt revived. Beer became part of his life.
Beer brought my grandfather happiness, but also made my father angry and worried. My father didn’t like the way my grandfather looked after drinking beer. My father always asked my grandpa to stop drinking because of his health and behaviour. My grandpa never listened to his advice, because he was so addicted to beer. Every time my father told him to stop drinking, they would start fighting. Starting from the day my grandpa first got drunk, the relationship between father and son became worse and worse. And starting from that day, my father hated beer from his heart.
One day, my father came home after school as normal; he played football in the field, walked home and said goodbye to his friends. Everything went very smoothly, as normal as normal, but he didn’t know what was going to happen in three minutes. My father frowned as he walked up the stairs to his apartment, because he knew that his father was drinking beer. But he never knew this would never happen in front of him again. Then he put the key into the keyhole, and opened the door. My father was shocked by the image he saw inside the silent house.
There was a man lying on the ground, with a beer bottle in his hand. The man seemed like he was not going to wake up. The world seemed to stop for few minutes and the air seemed to stop floating. The only moving thing was the flowing beer on the floor.
“Dad! Wake up!! Dad! Dad!!” My father rushed into the apartment and shouted.
No one responded.
He lifted my grandfather up and ran down the stairs with his father on his back. His mind was blank, but his feet told him to go to the hospital as soon as possible.
My father hated my grandfather’s drinking very much when he was young, but he changed his mind after this story. Beer made my grandfather happy but also took his life away. He still had a beer bottle in his hand when he died.
Suddenly a sentence came out from my head:
“No matter where you go; what you do, just remember one thing: enjoy your life!”
That’s what my grandfather always told my father.
