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| Jardin des Plantes 1925 |
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| Paris 1934 |
'' If you want to change the world, start with yourself ''
Gandhi
Foreword
I always wanted to tell the story of my Dad but as the years went by, I could not make up my mind. I did write a biography of Nguyễn Đăng Tam, his father while bringing my father's remains back to Boise. This week I tumbled upon an unique photo, taken in Huế 95 years ago, Grand Pa Tam and maternal Great Grand Pa Thuât standing side by side. It was titled by the French organization, Les Amis du Vieux Huế: Thé d'honneur des mandarins supérieurs, Huế 1924. Another lesson learned: while you get older, you can ignore the future but not escape the past. As William Faulkner said: " The past is never dead. It's not even past."
Papa for all his qualities was a difficult person, and the context of his life undoubtedly fashioned his personal character. I avoid talking about him since his death in 1995 for one main reason: there's no point telling his story when the shortcomings were all that I remembered. He has 6 children and when they discussed about him, positive comments or happy memories rarely came out. From infancy to adolescence, I was closest to him being the youngest kid. He confided to me quite often as I was just a listening device with nothing to argue back. But I have more than ears, I have a good memory to reveal his thoughts for posterity.
I brought his ashes in 2009 back to Boise where my Mom was buried, so they could remain together and be reconciled at last, after an existence fraught with conflict and separation. And the time has come to write about him, in a detached and objective way. It's not revised history but an effort to rehabilitate a good father. As my brother Tế told me, and his words have more meaning now " Papa was an honest and uncompromising figure but he never had regrets. He died in good conscience being true to himself. I am proud of him.'' This statement is worth repeating at the end of his story.
The early years of a dashing fellow
Born in 1907 in Huế, he came from an upper class family, his father Nguyễn Đăng Tam a seasoned mandarin, having served many Annam monarchs until the 1930s. Being fluent in French, he got a scholarship in 1925 to study engineering in Angers at the prestigious Écoles des Arts et Métiers. He was the only child from a big family allowed to study abroad, a privilege offered to a tiny minority. From Saigon Harbor where he departed, it took him a month to reach Marseille, going through the Suez Canal.
During the summer he worked and traveled across France and its regions as a guided tour. Coming from a well connected family in Annam, he got in touch with the French high society, like Admiral Etienne Delrieu or with the Vietnamese diaspora like exiled Ngô Đình Nhu, brother of future president Diem. Life was exciting for the ambitious and idealistic young man. In all likelihood, Robert Hoằng Esquire was a great prospect later on.
Upon graduation from les Arts et Métiers my Dad went to work as an engineer in Algiers for the French. With a message from his father, he met exiled emperor Hàm Nghi and his 2 daughters, princesses Như Mai and Như Lý. The girls were much older so perhaps it wasn't an attractive proposition for him. He stayed about 10 years altogether in France and North Africa. Finally in 1936 he went back to Vietnam and met Đỗ thị Loan, my Mom in Hanoi. Actually he wanted to see her cousins but nobody was home that day. So she went out to see who rang the bell at the gate- being a progressive girl. At that time a lady of a bourgeois family didn't go to open the gate. My Mom was struck by his traits, a handsome and elegant bachelor with a French education and nice pedigree.
For the first few years of marriage, my parents lived in his father's estate in Huế where all the family was assembled. In 1937, a few months before the birth of Hélène Diệu Hồi my oldest sister, my grand father passed away. It was a difficult period for my mother who felt mistreated by her husband's family. Being far away from home, in a hostile household, she was isolated and neglected by her husband who worked in distant places. There's the first sign of discontent that didn't make things easier for the newlyweds. Private circumstances made life tougher for the young couple whose living was marred by family rivalry and conflict.
Family life on the run
When Diệu Hồi was just a few months old, my father moved to Vinh, a small town south of Nam Dinh, North VN. And the family moved again to Nha Trang, a sea resort city in Central VN, staying at a nice villa on a beach road called Beau Rivage. My sister recalled: '' The plush area contained great villas around a large yard aligned with pines. I can still remember the sounds of these when gentle winds of the sea blow into their needles, with a sound resembling the song of a flute. Coconut trees in front and lines of 'cây bàng' are along both sides of the driveway.''
Life was enjoyable again for a couple of years, then our maternal grand pa died in 1942 and in May, Pauline Minh Nguyên, our second sister came to life. No more subsidy arrived from my mother`s side. With the Japanese invasion a year later, the young family had to move into a smaller house in town. Pa was often away, 'en tournée' was the word. My Mom and the 2 daughters who missed their Pa huddled together, with Cô 11 around and a couple of servants. Jacqueline Giám Thanh our third sister saw the day in May 1943. And more hard times were looming ahead.
My father for some unknown reason moved around often and that put a strain on my Mom and the children. In 1940, they lived in Saigon for a while and as a French soldier, he had to go to Sisophon in Cambodia to guard the French ammunition depot. One night there were news that the depot exploded, big noises could be heard from Saigon. According to Hồi, my Mom went crazy tearing all the clothes she wore and screamed, jumping up and down all night thinking he was dead. Then they moved to Dalat the VN highlands for a year or 2, after that to Đức Phổ where he caught malaria and almost died. He was blue and shaken with fever even when full blankets were put on him as my sister Hồi witnessed the scene and was so worried as a little kid.
The 'Chemin de Fer' company sent him to the unsavory 'khỉ ho cò gáy' places where nobody dared to go. Then the family moved to Quảng Ngãi where Georgette Thụy Cầu came to life in 1944 and back to Huế in 1945 while the Vietminh forces spread. My father had no work so they decided to go to Ấp Lời where ''at least there is food''. Life went on until my brother Tế was born in May 1948, the first precious son after 4 daughters in a row. In 1949, French parachutists went through the area and captured my Dad or actually he went out to meet them and they took him away. Six months later, my mother got a handwritten note by him, given to her by a woman in 'black pyjama'.
The episode reminded my sister Hồi of the movie Casablanca and other films where human smuggling during wartime is an affair of life and death. And as a French national, he was wrongly detained by them. It illustrated the absurdity of insurgency war where there's no front lines and the enemy invisible to the foreign occupants. The situation was unreal and comical because as a prisoner, my father was beaten and tortured by the French soldiers and each time he responded by shouting: '' Vive la France!'' So much to be said of the battle for the hearts and minds... He went back home growing a beard (like uncle Hồ) as I saw in some of his photos my mother kept. He began to get disenchanted with the French. And it wouldn't be the last time.
After his harrowing experience and brush with death in the hands of his fellow white soldiers, my father faced a tough dilemma. He was visibly torn between his loyalty to the old regime, being fed and nurtured by the colonial French, and his own sense of identity as a national patriot. This was typical of thousands of Vietnamese like him who were caught in the middle and victim of an unending struggle for national independence.
Early childhood with Pa
The whole family settled in Hanoi the capital. The year was 1950, and the sixth child was born. It was me, on September 21st. Life was bustling but pleasant in that big city. I remember quite a bit that early period of my infancy. My father must have got a job close to our place and he brought me to visit places around Hanoi like the Sword Lake, at that time named Hoàn Kiếm (retrieved sword). I recalled the One Pillar Pagoda where lettered men wrote Chinese characters on red papyrus to sell, exactly like nowadays. We went to have drinks on Hồ Tây (west lake) with my uncle Đổng. I even tried some of my Dad's beer and got shaky by spilling it on the table. I was no more than 3 years old...
It was the best episode of my infancy, peaceful and quiet but it was just the calm before the tempest and unforeseen tragic events were about to happen. In May 1954 came Điện Biên Phủ the infamous battle defeat of the French which triggered their humiliating withdrawal and our exodus from the north. We left Hanoi in September that year, after the Geneva Accord which separated the North from the South of VN, our final destination.
Just 2 months before, in July of 1954, my nanny Hồng told me that my mother had to attend the funeral of her cousin, Mr Đỗ Đình Đạo, a well known French collaborator from the Nationalist party. He had his own army fighting against the Vietminh and was murdered during that troubled transitional period. His corpse was left rotten for weeks before it was discovered. I cried desperately and adamantly wanted to go with my Mom to that funeral. Until today, the real motive of his murder remained a complete mystery. Looking back, my country could be aptly defined as a place of unfinished business and unsolved assassinations.
Fleeing from North to South
We went South from Hanoi to Huế , stayed there for 2 years and then to Đà Nẵng (Tourane) . In Huế, we lived again in my Grand Pa mansion, a huge villa next to An Cựu river. It was vacated and the emptied rooms were barely furnished. We were settling into an unsettling place. I felt like living in a haunted place. Next to the villa on the other side of the river was the house of Phạm Quỳnh, a minister of Bảo Đại. He was a respected writer back then but was murdered by mistake [sic!] in 1945, a few days into the Revolution. Trung Kỳ or Central VN was the hotbed of political upheaval, revolution and tragedy. And on a personal level, Huế remained the site of my parents' original discord.
My most memorable souvenir of Huế was the day I accompanied my father to greet Diệm in the streets. The new leader born in Hue came back from the US, being chosen by emperor Bảo Đại to form a new government, 1955. Thousands of people were massed along the streets. Of course I didn't know Diệm, I just accompanied my Dad wherever he went. I cannot imagine he could have asked my sisters or brother seeing a total stranger like Diệm! When Diệm showed up standing on the GMC truck, it was pandemonium as people waved and shouted: ' Hoan hô chí sĩ Ngô đình Diệm!' (long live the great Diem). My father was obviously moved by the sight and beaming with pride. Diệm, in his 50's, looked younger than his age with a broad smile as I remembered vividly.
In retrospect, I understand his contact with the Diem party, particularly Nhu the brother he met in France to participate in the newly created nationalist VN government, free from French control. As a patriot, the question for my father was to renounce his French nationality in order to adhere to Diệm and his clique. By law, under the 'filiation paternelle' article, the children become Vietnamese automatically when the parents are doing so, unless the child is an adult, which was the case of my oldest sister Diệu Hồi. She was 18 in 1955.
My mother was adamantly against switching to VN citizenship for her own practical reasons. And that was another contentious point between them for years after. She always lamented about missing the opportunity to go to France, a country she longed to visit (I recently found out that she still missed her early sweetheart living in Paris). She hoped that my oldest sister would keep the French name and title. After the dreadful years she had been through early in her marriage with her husband's family in Huế, she's embroiled in fist fight this time against the husband, in front of me. I felt traumatized. In a way my Mom had a premonition that sooner or later the family would have to flee from VN and she from him.
Tourane, 1955 or 56 we stayed in a small house facing an open grass field and goats from a Pakistani old man came to be fed. He sold us some delicious goat milk he brought every day for us. He even taught us how to count from one to ten in his dialect: satu, dua, tua, ... On a sunny day, my sisters having known some French girls from school would bring me to the beach to swim. I was so excited for an outing of that sort that I prepared days before a kind of frogmen flipper to swim faster by using a tiny paper label with tissue thread and put on my toes.
Life in Saigon (1956-1968)
We moved again to Saigon in 1957 and stayed on Pasteur street, in front of the theater Rạng Đông and next to the technical institute Petrus Ký where my father was named director. We settled in quite nicely and I started going to the St Exupéry elementary school. He enjoyed a great position, managing one of the best trade school in the country. People went to visit our home and asking for their kids to be enrolled there . Favoritism was and still is the trademark of relationship in VN. But my father would have none of that. He refused to play the game and rejected bribes for registering students. Some parents offered gold my Mom recalled. He hold the piece and said: 'what's this for ?' Honesty was his trait but not a quality endeared in our country. And he will pay for that.
His case wasn't unique though when you look at the Vietnamese situation at the time and it did bring out a much more complex question. Beset by insurmountable difficulties, the government needed competent and qualified people to deal with its immediate challenges. Those in the administration were mostly opportunists benefiting from their position while lacking the duty purpose. My father was on the other side of that perspective, and he's in a minority and completely marginalized. His frustration and impotence were simmering through his stern behavior.
He told me, with an air of relish, an anecdote about his father who served emperor Khải Định. During a meeting in Hue, the Emperor gave his court officials some fruit peaches sent by the Chinese. He then asked them about the fruits and they all lavishly praised that the peaches were delicious etc... As my Grand Father kept quiet, Khải Định looked at him and said: '' And you, what do you think?'' His chin raised, he shot back: '' Sire, they are not good!" The whole assembly was stunned. After a moment of nervous silence, Khải Định saved the situation and nodded with a smile: " You are right, they are not good..."
We lived on a 2nd floor house while the first floor was occupied by Mr. Khải, a drunken man who one night insulted my Dad. A fight followed and my Dad went home with a bloodied nose. We all went downstairs and confronted the nasty neighbor. My sister Hoi, in her 20s, tackled him with a few 'judo' moves and he used a dog whip to hit her in the back and we could see sparks flied when the metallic whip hit the wall. The curious onlookers from the area were looking in. It was Saturday Night Live in Saigon! One man told my sister to open the gate so he could give the jerk a lesson. Mr Khải went on suing my family for threats and bodily harm! The judge dismissed his case citing that:' there's no way a mild mannered girl, my sister, would beat up a big fellow as Mr Khải'.
In 1958 the family moved this time to Tân Sơn Nhứt, the civilian air base where my father got a new job as engineer. It was quite far from downtown Saigon judging from our means of transport. I took the 'mobylette' with my brother or the bicycle going to Lycée JJ. Rousseau, next to the Presidential Palace, a 30 minute drive. We enjoyed a few years of normalcy and happiness. It was a well preserved residential area for public servants and their family. My cousins and the parents came to see us on week end, as well as my sisters' friends. They looked with envy our quality of life because the area complex was restricted with policemen and barriers, enhancing our safety and peace of mind.
While working there, my father faced indifference and rejection from his colleagues in Tân Sơn Nhứt. After the French blunder with his arrest in the bushes of Ấp Lời and many other affronts, I suspected he was more sympathetic to the Communist cause, although he belonged to a bourgeois setting and the product of a monarchist upbringing. He admired prime minister Phạm Văn Đồng, a friend of his early years and a Hồ Chí Minh comrade, comparing Đồng to ' the only flower standing in the mud of VN.'
Simply put he was disappointed with his peers and the whole context at that time. With his contrarian attitude, he was unable to get along with the people he worked with and was disgusted by their greedy behavior. Being put aside and isolated at the workplace, he poured his anger on his family. One day, with a grim face and returning from work he asked me to prepare a lemonade. For some reason, I added milk to the lemonade producing a creamy melange. He just whacked me on the face saying" what kind of drink is this?" So much for my mixing beverage.
I also had my daily happy moments. Each afternoon, the delivery man on bike brought us the newspaper Tự Do (liberty) and I was the one to read it first. The Berlin blockade, the Sputnik satellite launch, the Kennedy assassination headlines went through my eyes, but not many captivating news about the domestic situation. As a staple newspaper under the watchful eye of the censorship authority, Tự Do Daily was walking on eggs, as many other press outlets during that time. I heard on the radio a famous reporter from Tự Do who went to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. He was interviewed back in Saigon and he confessed his trip made him feel ashamed. Freedom of expression in Vietnam? As a young boy then, I already knew what's it all about.
Forceful events just kept happening in those days, the most vivid was my father adhesion to the Cần Lao Nhân Vị movement launched by Nhu, Diệm's younger brother, the brain behind the throne. As the main strategist of the regime, he founded the Personalist ideology, a counter force to Marxism. He knew that the South was lacking in motivation and spirit facing a Marxist Leninist tidal wave. So why not fighting an idea with another idea? An immunization against an infectious deadly disease, Marxism.
The best and brightest among the public servants were mobilized to adhere to the new thinking and spread the message among the population. My father was one of them. He went to Vĩnh Long for meetings and got involved with the campaign. For whatever reason, he had a heart attack there and almost died. The priest was beside him for the last absolution. Maybe the ideology was too much for him to digest or rumors said he was poisoned for being too reluctant to the movement.
Back in Saigon, after some commissions for Nhu, he started to ask me point blank, a 9 year old, what do I think about the Nhân Vị theory. Sensing some reservation, my Dad bursted into laughter. I found out later that Emmanuel Mounier, a French priest was the founder of that rightist movement. Unless you have a Master degree of philosophy, it doesn't mean a damn thing. For struggling Vietnamese to make ends meet Personalism was a stratospheric theory bordering the ridicule. Judging from my father's reaction, Nhu and his cohort (my father included) knew that their ideology was nothing more than a big joke.
From 1960 onward, South VN was overwhelmed with armed rebellion and military coup, first in November of that year with the Airborne brigade under Colonel Thi attacking the Thống Nhất Palace where Diệm and Nhu resided. Then in 1962 the Army pilots bombed the same building almost killing Nhu's wife, the infamous Lệ Xuân. Then the coup de grâce was given in November 1st 1963 when the generals overthrew Diệm and killed the 2 brothers. It was done after the Buddhist repression a few months earlier and my brother and I were the innocent victims. We were arrested while going to church on August. I already described the story at length in another tribune. I was not even 13, the youngest political detainee of the crackdown, no doubt. We were detained but not mistreated for 2 weeks, in Quang Trung military base near Saigon.
My father was out of himself when we were arrested. The situation then was critical, life and death were a matter of seconds. My sister Thanh told me later that he verbally abused a well connected (intelligence) officer Mr. Bảo, a family friend who came to visit us regularly. He told my family that if his sons were arrested, he would not know how to find them. My father almost blew up and his confidence on Diệm was erased for good, as the majority of the VN families who were victimized by the regime. The episode deeply affected me. I attained a level of maturity that made me conscious of the fractious political situation in VN. And I already sensed that I wouldn't belong there and wanted to turn the page by looking elsewhere.
Early retirement and solitude
At 55 as the law required, my father was asked to retire. He didn't mind to leave his job considering his state of mind vis-a vis the work he's performing. For the rest of the family, it's a different story. My mother wanted to prolong our stay in Tân Sơn Nhứt, life being great with all the amenities. My father felt otherwise and his ego didn't allow him to remain, now that he's not supposed to. He already bought a parcel of land in Hạnh Thông Tây, about 10km from Saigon. But none of us wanted to live there, it's too far from downtown and we had no easy means of transport. I had to go to school and my sisters to work in Saigon.
Feeling as an outcast in his own turf, far from the niceties of center town, he wooed me back in Hạnh Thông Tây by inviting me to the see movies on weekends, if I spent the night there. Again he didn't bother to ask my brother or my sisters to do the same. I did acquiesced to his offer but still had to go to school and stayed with my Mom in the air base. I remember seeing lots of movies with him: Austerlitz, The River Kwai, Ben Hur...Sometimes in broad daylight I went right across the street of the cottage and visited the military cemetery that was newly constructed and already overflowed with funerals.
I remember the tombstones with encrusted pictures and personal objects. I was too young to understand the extent of the tragedies of war and the effects on our people, North and South. What I saw was unbearable, written epitaph on a captain, chief district killed in battle, a sergeant from some unit sacrificing for the country... Too close to the war, I didn't cry then, but I do now, writing these lines. The sight of aligned and uneven tombs with the sound of people and visiting families, moaning and lamenting their lost one were gut wrenching and apocalyptic. With hindsight, our country mortified and ruined, was next to Hell thanks to the stupidity and short view of its leaders. War serves no purpose but to the rich and powerful who unleash calamity for their own benefit.
We finally moved out of the airbase in 1966 to Chí Hòa. My mother bought a tiny townhouse there. During that period, I met Bill Jackson Jr who was enlisted with the US Army and came earlier to VN on his tour of duty. He stayed and worked for RMK, a construction company, rebuilding VN infrastructure. He rented an apartment next to our place. He met Jackie my third sister and the 2 got married in 1968. During that year, I didn't see my father very often. I was on my last year at the high school and preparing my baccalaureat. Then the Tet offensive struck and spreading across the country and particularly in Saigon. Just on the eve of my exams in May 68, the Việt Cộng attacked and we were caught in the crossfire. It was really a close call. The next few days, I was studying and watching from the balcony helicopters firing rockets into Communist positions who ran over the city.
My own new life abroad (1968-1979)
Having nicely passed the French baccalaureat, I was able to depart from VN to study in Montreal on August 1968. My Dad was very subdued and saddened seeing his youngest child leave. On one hand he was relieved to see me going abroad and avoid being another victim of a silly conflict. But he sensed that I was not going to come back, unless the war ends and peace will be restored, a wishful thinking. He stood there stoically and displayed no emotion when I took off from Tân Sơn Nhứt airport.
My new life in a distant and winter stricken Canada could be summed up in one word, books. Day in and day out. I was even sleeping on my desk at night to prepare for exams the next day for I had only one objective in mind: to obtain my master's degree as quickly as possible. Failing was not an option. Dashing out of my MBA in 4 years time, in May 1972 I started working for the National Bank on rue Saint Jacques, the financial district of Montreal. And I moved to Ottawa in 1974 to teach Economics and Finance. I didn't look back at my life in VN. Then events in Saigon took over in 1975. South VN was defeated by the Communists from the North. My mother was able to rejoin Jackie later on in Boise and Pauline finally with her husband in Oklahoma and Portland. My father stayed behind in Saigon, with my sister Georgette.
While he was a half admirer of uncle Hồ (my Dad grew a beard for a second time to resemble him), the reality of living under that regime is a different story. When you had to deal with material shortage and impediment, ideological sympathy could evaporate quickly. But my father had an ace in his hand. He wrote to his buddy Phạm Văn Đồng and got a response in 1976. I still have the letter with me. Prime minister Đồng of the Socialist Republic of VN sent an aide to Hạnh Thông Tây to facilitate his flight from Saigon. I was stunned by the act of the gracious "Flower among the dirty mud of Vietnam". My father left VN for France in November 1979. His honesty and untainted character did pay off. While many humiliated South VN officials escaped unceremoniously from Saigon, he got red carpet treatment and left by the front door. There's some fairness in life after all.
My father swift flight from VN at the time was beyond imagination. People thought we bribed the Communists with cash, otherwise he couldn't get out unscathed. The iron wall had fallen upon South VN. And most of the former officials were put into re-education camps and their treatment equated to the degree of their misdeed. North Vietnamese agents had gone South after the 'liberation' and searched the files of the vanquished and spared no one.The time for harsh retribution had come. For the counter-revolutionaries who stayed behind, it's payback time.
Phạm Văn Đồng wasn't helping my father for some altruistic motive. He took time investigating my Dad's dossier during the Diệm period and came to the conclusion that he was a harmless entity, even a nuisance to Diệm and his regime, not worth to be prosecuted. Marxist leaders didn't take benevolent feelings for granted, even when they were dealing with friends or benefactors. It was an intended political pardon from the victor to the vanquished.
The last stretch
My brother and I went to visit him during Xmas after he arrived to stay with Cô 11, his younger sister who ran a small restaurant in Nice. It was more than 10 years that dad and sons didn't have a reunion. He seemed upbeat and in fighting mood, like having a second birth and free at last. We didn't talk about his life under the new regime. What for? On Xmas eve, my aunt and her daughter Ty prepared a big dinner for us with some friends and neighbors from her Berlioz residence. The atmosphere was feisty, everybody had a good time with small talk and vintage Daddy has returned, sharp in tongue, witty and unforgiving. After a few champagne, out of the blue he asked the guest next to him:' Vous connaissez Bouddha? (Do you know Buddha?). Caught off guard, the man mumbled a few words. I could hear a mosquito flying in the room.
His stay in Nice was filled with mishaps. One evening my Dad was invited to a well heeled gathering at the Negresco Hotel, the temple of French Riviera jet set. It was organized by the Engineer Society of France which he was a member. They got wind of his flee from Saigon and wanted him part of the meeting. But they weren't prepared for what happened next. My beloved Dad, true to himself arrived at the hotel in old clothes, neither tie nor costume. Apparently he was ejected from the place by the doorman who thought his attire unsuitable for the circumstance. My cousin Ty saw him sitting on a bench on his way back to the apartment, subdued but unrepentant. She knew what was happening.
The next days, Ty convinced my father to go shopping for he barely brought anything with him from VN. He went along with his niece to the pricey department stores in Nice, trying some new clothes on but after a while in the fitting room and exceedingly fed up, he just sat in there. My cousin Ty was waiting outside for a long time, sensing there's something wrong. She went into the room and saw him naked. Demonstrating his displeasure, he didn't bother to put back his own ragged clothes on...
I went back to see him during the summer of 1980 and he showed me a long and well written letter he sent to Giscard d'Estaing, then president of France. He detailed his escape from Saigon and the sacrifice he made for France etc... He wanted to re-obtain the French nationality and to receive a well earned pension. He imagined that a humanitarian nation, cradle of liberty and fraternity like France would offer him refuge and reward for service rendered to la Mère Patrie, now that he's at the end of his life. If Pham Van Dong, a hardened Communist apparatchik could remember and save him, how about the sophisticated aristocrat from the Elysée Palace? The answer from the French was unambiguous: he already repudiated French citizenship and won't be offered any special treatment. His legal stay in France was rejected.
After a few months in Montreal with my brother Tế and visiting me in Ottawa where the winter cold was unbearable in 1981, he had no other choice than going to Washington DC then Boise, to rejoin my mother and my sister Jacqueline with her husband Bill. Life was comfortable but uneasy for him, being now completely dependent on his wife and kids. He felt homesick and 'dépaysé', not speaking and understanding well the language.
My 2 nephews from Boise in their teens being Americans wouldn't treat him any differently, grand pa or not. He complained to Jackie that when the boys saw him, they always said: 'Hi Bob!' his French first name being Robert. And surely my Mom wasn't treating him with velvet glove, her memory of past incidents still intact. There were some debts to be repaid. The message was clear, she wanted to be left alone. Portland Oregon was his last stay with my sister Pauline, until September 1995 when he slipped on the street pavement and died of a head commotion. It was a few days short of his 88th birthday. I was able to visit him there with my son Alex in 1988 and we saw each other a few more times.
Aftermath: from here to eternity
In 2009, following the advice of my future spouse, I brought his ashes from Portland to Boise Idaho. I did it for some practical reasons but also as I said to reconcile my parents at last. I didn't convince everybody but I thought it was the right thing to do. Once his remains were interned at the cemetery next to my Mom's tomb, the next day I phoned to Loan, a cousin from California I haven't heard for 40 years. She told me that the tomb of my grand father, his own father was found. I was searching for his tomb for years, with no result. It was more than a coincidence. Later in December 2009, I went back to Hue and visited my grand father's tomb in Thuyền Tôn pagoda for the first time. I am eternally grateful, for both of them had responded to my prayers and allowed me to fulfill my own promise.
My father lived a long and momentous life which was a mirror image of our country during that period. Like many of his generation, he was an ordinary figure and the unsung hero of a tortuous episode that left no one unscathed. People's character and mindset could shape society and its institution, and vice versa. My father's personality was a direct result of the historical conditions he lived in. His honesty and decency were swept under the social disease of greed, corruption and moral decline. Like his own father, a straight and unflinching character among the outdated and anemic monarchy on near extinction, my father remained loyal to his upbringing and he suffered dearly as a result.
As a disciple of Gandhi, my father could have strive and made a contribution in a country stricken by ignorance, hate and violence. Unfortunately, his whole life didn't evolve as he expected. Just another missed and unfulfilled destiny. "But he died with no regrets, as an honest and uncompromising character, true to himself" And I am proud of him. These 2 citations from his spiritual master would best describe his life testament:
" Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs but not every man's greed."
" Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat for it is momentary"
Lưu Nguyễn
Ottawa, November 2018
