To Ease the Passing of Time

His Vietnamese name is Thành Dat. It means to achieve something. He left Vietnam with his parents and his younger sister when he was a child. They were boat people. His sister drowned after their boat hit a rock and sank near an island in Indonesia. They spent a few months in a refugee camp before coming to San Jose, in California.

Thành Dat went to school in America, and became Jack, Jack Nguyen. His parents worked hard to send him to the best schools. He studied to learn how to become rich, and was very successful. A few years after graduating, he was already a millionaire. He invested in a sweat shop that made massage chairs in Vietnam and sold them all over the world.

He married a young Vietnamese woman from San Francisco who was just as ambitious as he was, and together they made more millions. They bought condos and sold them after a few years for a big profit. They invested wisely in all types of businesses, and made even more money. He gave lectures that he was paid to give to motivate the young ones to follow his tracks. They always introduced him as a success story, the man who started with nothing, and made it on his own.

He bought a boat even if he didn’t like boats (boats always brought back memories of the sister that he had lost) because when you’re rich in Cali, you need to have a boat to show that you are rich. With his wife, he often went to Las Vegas to gamble. When he went back to Vietnam, he was treated like a king. He had numerous affairs, and his wife had lovers. They never had children because they were too busy making money. They took cocaine once in a while to give themselves a boost when they ran out of energy.

When his father passed away, he was in Singapore on a business trip. His saw his mother in her hospital bed the night before she passed away. She wanted to tell him something, but he had to take a phone call; it was important…millions of dollars. He said it he would be back in a few minutes, but it took longer than he thought. When he came back into her room, his mother had fallen asleep, and he never knew what she wanted to tell him.

Tonight, he’s alone in his hospital room, a private room, of course. His wife came to visit him. She asked him about his life insurance policies, but she had to cut the visit short because she received an important phone call about a real estate transaction.

He had a heart attack a few days ago. The doctor said his heart was badly damaged. He heard him whisper to his wife that he didn’t think he was going to make it. They thought he was sleeping.

Now, he’s lying alone on his hospital bed. The nurse has just left the room, and said that he should try to rest. He looks at the tiny closet where his wife put the small suitcase with a few personal items that she brought for him. He’s thinking that life is like a funnel: the deeper you go into it, the less you’re able to take with you. “You’re a success story, a fucking success story”, he tells himself, and he starts laughing, and then he starts crying.

As the tears are rolling down on his cheeks, the memories start coming back. He sees his parents on the boat, fearful but smiling, as they left Vietnam in the middle of the night a long time ago. He remembers the eyes of his sister full of excitement when they were so close to freedom...before the boat hit the rock. He remembers the camp, and when they arrived in their new country. He remembers his first days of school in a different language, how alone and lost he felt.  

And then he remembered when his parents took him to a pagoda in Los Angeles to listen to the teaching of a Vietnamese monk. He doesn’t remember what the monk said, but he remembers that he spoke in a soft and gentle voice, and everybody was listening to him. After that, as all the monks and nuns were standing in front of them, a young woman started to play the violin. It was so beautiful. He thought he was in heaven. Somebody said that the young woman had a very special talent, and could have easily made an international career, and become very famous, but she chose to become a nun and use her talent to pray. “She could have become a success story like me”, he thought bitterly and sadly. He felt that he had wasted his life completely.

He remembered vaguely the title of the chant that the nun was playing on her violin. He grabbed his smart phone on the table next to his bed, and found a video on YouTube. He heard the young woman play the violin again, and it started to heal his soul. It was as if the sun was shining through the fog. He became a child again, holding his parents’ hands, his heart full of love and hope.

He knew that he was ready to go through the pain and the suffering because he knew that he was not alone; he knew that God's love and forgiveness were greater than the bad things he had done, and that his parents and sister were waiting for him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_KQG34VNXA