Remembering My Mother
Ly Thi Nguyen, 10.05.1947 - 02.06.2024
“I never know when God will call me,” my mom used to say. “The only thing I can do is pray for more days.”
A religiously devout woman, my mom always talked about death like a calling, where you kneel before God and await His judgment. While she seems to have made peace with it, I have not.
She passed away on February 6th at the age of 76. Her death leaves gaping hole, both in our Saturday morning routine and in our hearts. It also leaves me with many unanswered questions, not to mention, a few recipes!
Here’s what I do not know and never will: what was she like as a child? Pugnacious? Loud? Quiet? What was her favorite subject in school? Her hobbies, if any? What did she wanted to be when she grew up? Who were her best friends? And did she ever love anyone else besides my father?
Here’s what I do know: some people are born into a life of privilege; others are destined for hardship. My mom fell into the latter category. Her life had never been easy, starting with the fact that she was born as the youngest to a large family1, and being a girl also worked against her.
When she was born, Vietnam was still under French colonial rule. Her family came from a rural village in the Quang Ninh province on the northeastern tip of Vietnam. She never made it past middle school. I’m certain that it wasn’t for a lack of intelligence but rather a lack of opportunity. Because her family was poor, survival was more important than education.
Furthermore, she lived in an isolated beach town near the border between Vietnam and China. Due to the close proximity between the two countries, her father, an herbalist, made frequent travels, presumably for his profession. I do not know what her mother did for a living but I assume that it had to do with childrearing and being a homemaker.
Whether or not my mom wanted to be a homemaker herself we’ll never know, because when she was seventeen, she married my father in an arranged marriage. By then, her family had migrated south to a village with the same name (!) – Tra Co – located less than an hour from what is now known as Ho Chi Minh City. This is the village where I was born and raised, where my parents made a life together and where many of our close relatives lived until we dispersed to different parts of the country we call America, thanks to sponsorship and refugee status.
When I was little, I frequently passed by the altar erected to honor my maternal grandparents—her parents—in our living room. This is a common practice in Vietnamese families. An altar with offerings of fruit, flowers and incense placed in front of framed photos of the deceased is a way to ensure they’re remembered so they can bless you in the afterlife. I shuddered every time I saw those pictures of my grandparents. They did not look like nice people.
Perhaps this rubbed off a bit on my mother, who was not known for outward displays of affection. From the very beginning, we had opposite personalities. To her, I was a needy, overly sensitive child who gave her too much grief during labor (“You took two days to come out,” she used to say. “TWO DAYS!!”) To me, she was more bitter than a bitter melon. We clashed. I frequently wondered if she was my real mother at all. Perhaps my father had an affair and my real mother died in childbirth?
Regardless of what the truth is, I know she loved me. Her expressions of love were not physical, but rather through actions. She gave me money when she saw that I needed it, even when I didn’t ask. She made sure that I went to a good school, that I showed respect to elders. (Respect was a big thing for her). And when I had my first child, she moved in to help with daycare. Then she moved out, and back again when I had my second child.
She always said that a mother’s love is the purest kind of love, one you could only feel when you hold your baby for the first time. When I held my newborn daughter for the first time, I finally understood what she meant. The magnitude of that love is unexplainable, hard to express sometimes.
As a kid, I saw little of my mother, for she worked a lot. She was a roving food vendor. Every morning, she’d wake up before dawn, make the food she was going to sell that day, and leave to do so in the city and come home late in the evening. This fact remained the same even after we came to America2.
Little did I realize that where I came from—a small village in southern Vietnam—it wasn’t normal to have a working mother. In fact, many women in our community stayed at home and raised their children while the men worked. In my family, the roles were reversed .
Having a working mother who took care of a lot of things helped me realize that yes, I can be a working mother as well! My mother redefined a new normal for the following generation of females. She did all the the hard things to prove that it can be done, that it should be done, that gender has no boundaries.
Somewhere along the way, we drifted apart. During my twenties, there were months when we didn’t talk to each other. After my dad passed away, she spent a number of years living with strangers or friends of friends or people she met through church. Then there were small periods of time when she lived with each of her kids—my two brothers and I. Nothing worked out. She craved independence and autonomy. And she got exactly that in 2019.
After spending several years on a waiting list, she finally got a subsidized apartment in a nice part of town. Finally, her own place! We were all so joyful. Unfortunately, it coincided with her getting gastric cancer. Still, she braved cancer treatment and surgery. By April 2020, she was done with chemo and declared cancer-free. Thus the beginning of our reconnection.
I’d like to think that the pandemic brought us closer together. She became nicer and I became more understanding. In the past 3 ½ years, we’ve seen each other 200+ times, more than we’ve ever had in the first three decades of my life. Most of that time was with my kids in tow, doing simple things like grocery shopping and decorating for Christmas and making French fries and writing birthday cards for her neighbors, but it’s time we’ll never get back.
Cancer is a serious disease with no cure; worse, it shows no mercy on the individual. When we all gathered at her apartment on Thanksgiving last year, she was perfectly jolly. She looked happy as she thanked all of us, her kids and their respective families, for coming. We even joked about how we would divide up her “wealth” when she passes. Little did we know that in less than three months she would actually be dead.
Seeing my once round-faced chubby mother wither away in the hospital was incredibly hard. Her skin was sallow, her cheeks gaunt. Her eyes were empty pockets of nothingness. She lost her ability to move and talked only through mumbling. She needed help with eating and with everything. But like the tough person she was on the inside, she fought hard until the end.
I spent my birthday this year cleaning out her entire apartment. It made me so sad to think that so many things that happened in the apartment will never happen again. There were several moments in the past three plus years where my kids and I spent there, sometimes doing nothing more than eating, chatting and playing around, where I thought to myself, “I have to mindful of this moment because this will not last. Someday this will all be over.” I just didn’t expect for it to be over so soon.
My mom’s biggest fear was to die alone, where nobody would discover her body for several days. Well, that did not happen. She died surrounded by loved ones, with prayers for sendoff. She left behind three kids, seven grandkids, and one great-grandchild. I can imagine her sitting on her heavenly throne saying, “Not too bad, if I do say so myself.”
I believe there were nine kids total, but I’m not 100% sure.
Except she no longer walked to work. She took the bus.
I learned things about grandma I never knew. Thank you for this piece. It was very emotional and heartfelt. I love you auntie Hoang.
I’m so very sorry to read about the loss of your mother, Hoang. This is a beautiful, heartfelt tribute that I’m sure wasn’t easy to write. I’m glad that the divisions between you healed in the end, that you spent so much time together and that your kids will have fond memories of the time they spent with their grandmother.