The dark night cloud scattered across the evening horizon. The main streets were loud and booming with activities, but the side street were surprisingly quiet. Evening vendors woudl set up stand and cook up food. Quality of the food was questionalble, but the food was good at least––it was authentic to the true nature of a Vietnamese experience.
On such evening, my mom would be busy at her second job as a pharmacist. It was her second job in addition to her full-time position as a doctor at the local community hospital. She worked tirelessly from morning until deep into the night––making and saving whatever she had to ensure that her family was fed properly.
I was, therefore, raised by my grandparents during that period. I had extremely fond of memories of that time in my life. The memories were covered in nostalgia, but vivid and I always surprised the people around me how much I manage to remember such memory from such a young age.
One of such memories, were my grandpa walking with a gentle limps across those Vietnamese streeets at those late night hours going to buy eggs, canned tuna, bread, and soy sauce. If I can recall, I would sometime come with him. Nonetheless, he would come home with those simple ingredients. Our family weren’t rich and we were actually barely middle class; but, you don’t need to be wealthy to understand hapiness.
To me, I cherrished the memories that I spent with my grandpa eating on the small living room floor with bread crumbs from the baguette scattered across the newspapers spreaded on the floor. We only ate bread, eggs, and soy sauce, but yet I enjoy every moment of it.
On a Spring evening, I received words from my mom. The clock was ticking close to 6 pm. I was staying temporarily in Hong Kong at that time when received the news: my grandpa had passed. He passed in his sleep during night and before the break of dawn. He had been fighting with cancer up until that point. Not wanting to bother the family, he––like so many of his generation that went through war––kept his pain to himself. It was only after my mom discovered his jaundaiced skin, that the family rushed him into the family ward. Regretfully, his cancer was too advanced, and modern medicine couldn’t save him. Though he was in a lot of pain, but at the very least, when he left this waking world, he left it without any pain or remorse.
It was within moments between when I received the news from my mom and following the funeral that I had begun to realised: I’m losing my ethnic root. Specifically, my Vietnamese root that contained the innocent memory of mine as a child who was borned and raised for a while in Vietnam. One day, the final people will have passed through this world, and the people who had formerly remember whom I was would be forgotten to never be fortold. My story may continue, but those people who remember who I was would not be present in my current world.
And so, all I could do is cried.
I cried hard because I just lost my grandpa. I cried hard because I lack the language ability to communicate with my grandparents. I cried hard because I am losing them––and therefore, I am losing a part of me.