The Other Phams

I have only met my grandfather (my dad’s father) only once. Ten years ago when my family visited Viet Nam for the first time, my grandfather met with my family in Nha Trang. From that passing encounter, I only remember thinking, “Grandfather has the biggest snaggle incisor I have seen in my life.” Tragically that is all I can remember about him when I was a sixteen year old.

My fleeting memories of him are the result of a complicated family history that I still do not fully understand. With the Viet Nam war in the backdrop, my grandfather left my grandmother who was a young mother in her early twenties and my father who was barely a toddler at the time. That sad story was replayed by thousands of other Vietnamese families during the tumultuous civil war. Despite numerous attempts by my father, he never forged a strong relationship with my grandfather, because my grandfather never fully embraced him as a son.

Today, my grandfather sits silent on his comfy sofa chair. Periods of unsettling emptiness appear in glossy eyes. A plastic bag is wrapped around his genitalia to capture spontaneous urination. His enduring snaggle tooth is gone, but so are his other teeth. He responds with semi-comprehensible Vietnamese, but most of his vocalizations resemble only gibberish. He is a man lost in his surviving body.

About 9 years ago, my grandfather suffered a stroke with major cerebral bleeding. Consequently a hole was drilled through his frontal skull bone to release pressure in brain cavity. Now, the hole is only covered by sunken skin.

Although most of his mind is lost to the world, his legacy remains visible in his other family. With a different wife, he had five children. Three remain alive as my half-aunts and half-uncle. Also the branches of the family tree extend further with five new half-cousins.

Previously I was lost in a new world of Phams. I did not know them; I am not directly connected to the heart wrenching decisions of my grandfather. However, our once intersected blood lines continue to unknowingly run in parallel. My grandfather’s mistakes carry deep wounds, but I never carried these wounds. That is not my story, but rather my father’s and grandmother’s story. My uncles, aunts, cousins, and I are only the observers of this sadness.

Unexpectedly this family extended their hearts to me with the willingness to mend the wounds and forge a new family together. I do not want to erase the past and I do not expect immediately healed wounds, but I always welcome an open heart and open mind.

Can’t we all just get along.