I suspect they were present in some nascent form when she was born, but they didn’t become evident until she was older, maybe around age four. I of course had much more pronounced and obvious cataracts at birth. In any case, neither of our vision problems could be addressed in Vietnam, with even less hope of successful treatment after the Communists won the war.
People fled the country at the time of the fall of Saigon, in 1975, but those early refugees tended to be the Vietnamese who feared reprisal for having sided with the South Vietnamese regime and the American forces.
By 1978, the ethnic Chinese, robbed of their economic freedom, and others were searching for means of unsanctioned escape. Given the clandestine nature of these escapes, it was often the young, single men and women who dared to brave the voyage on rickety fishing boats to locations like Hong Kong and Macau with the hope of eventually reaching a better place. Everyone dreamed of the United States, but other countries such as France, England, and Australia would also do. My third, fourth, and fifth uncles, my father’s younger brothers, were the young ones in our family, so they were the ones who dared.
But it was my mother who was the most daring of all. She asked her brothers-in-law to take my eight-year-old sister with them in the hope that Lyna would arrive in a place where her vision could be treated. We would follow later—perhaps to be reunited, perhaps not. Now that I am a mother I can imagine how difficult it must have been to let go of her firstborn child, to know there was the distinct possibility that she might never see her child again, that her child might die on this journey into an unknowable and unimaginable future she’d only glimpsed in movies and fairy tales. My mother tells me now she wanted me to go with my uncles, too, but I was just two years old and too young to thrust upon someone else.
My sister left. Weeks and months went by with no word from the uncles. Mail back then could take six months or longer to arrive, if it arrived at all. My worried mother went to consult Tobacco Woman’s Grandfather Spirit when he appeared. He told her that indeed my sister had arrived in America, that she was safe and that all was well. Weeks later, my mother received a letter and enclosed within was a picture of my sister posing with the glorious Golden Gate Bridge behind her, wearing her new American-bought clothes and sporting new glasses.
I realize that many who hear these stories will still not believe in ghosts, and that is perfectly understandable. While I believe in the existence of ghosts and spirits, I also believe that the souls represented by these ghosts and spirits eventually move on to something else, whether it be into a new life or another dimension in time and space, somewhere the soul has a chance to experience more of this universe and to learn. Ultimately, I believe in the evolution of the soul—that the meaning and purpose of life is to enrich the soul with all the joys and heartaches that this life and other lives can impart, that once the soul has learned as much as it can, with all its wisdom and knowledge it enters what the Buddhists would call Nirvana and what Christians might call Heaven and a closeness and even oneness with God.
Since my diagnosis, I’ve witnessed so much determination to remain alive at all costs, sometimes with a disturbing, maniacal frenzy. I am confident that it is my unwavering belief in ghosts, spirits, reincarnation, and the evolution of my soul that makes me unafraid of dying. Indeed, it is these convictions that will prevent me from clinging to this life and, in some respects, makes me look forward to death. These beliefs lie at the heart of the enduring, evolved, and thoughtful peace that I seek to find with my own death.
Believe what you need to believe in order to find comfort and peace with the inevitable fate that is common to every living thing on this planet. Death awaits us all; one can choose to run in fear from it or one can face it head-on with thoughtfulness, and from that thoughtfulness peace and serenity.
32
Living
On the first day of spring I had a chest CT scan and an abdominal and pelvic MRI. It had been ten weeks