Nothing captures parental love like a homemade meal. For Deng Caihou’s terminally ill mother, cooking her son one final meal was her way of saying goodbye before she died of cancer.
A clip of Deng’s mother preparing their last supper together posted on Douyin last week has gone viral, racking up over 80,000 likes.
The video, set to the Chinese folk song “Farewell,” shows his clean-shaven mother clad in comfy pajamas hunched over the kitchen counter with a ladle in hand preparing what appears to be some kind of soup. The post was captioned, “Mum, rest in peace. There’s nothing I can’t overcome anymore.”
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Deng, who is in his 20s and from Dalian city, said he was unable to hold back his tears while watching his mother embark on an arduous labor of love despite being left in a frail state after three rounds of chemotherapy.
“While she was cooking in the kitchen, I was sitting in the living room. I couldn’t stop crying seeing the sight of her back,” Deng reportedly told the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald. “She was already very feeble, but she still cooked for me. She was gasping for breath and took a rest for a long time after cooking.”
However, Deng said the quality of her food did not suffer one bit, describing the flavors as “the same as before” and adding that he “will remember those tastes forever.”
Deng’s mother died this month after being diagnosed with cancer in February.
Douyin users flooded the comments section of the post with support and personal stories of final culinary memories with a loved one.
“I found a bag of frozen dumplings my mother made for me in the fridge one month after she passed away. It contained the meat stuffing I like best,” one user wrote. “I ate a bowl of these dumplings, with half a bowl of tears.”
Featured Image via 邓才厚
