Deacon San M Nguyen
In the United States, every year in May (May), a day is dedicated to the Mother, called Mother’s Day, so that children have the opportunity to express their filial piety to their mother in different ways, such as buying gifts for Mom, taking Mom to see a musical performance, a movie, or to eat a restaurant and so on…; and the children also do the same ways in a day in June of each year, for the Father; that day is called Father’s Day.
Of course, the relationship between a child to his/her mother is often more intimate than to his/her father, because the mother normally stays home, spends more time with the children and looking after them than the Father. He has to go to work and deal with others in society; often he is absent from home because most of the times he has to work two or three jobs in a day at different places, or sometimes he has to work in places far away from home; therefore, he does not have much time to be at home with his family or to spend time with his wife and children.
Because of that reason, in certain situation the children misunderstood his feelings and think that he does not love them as much as their Mother does; moreover, the characters of a man rarely shows his affection to the children; and that is the characteristic of Asian men in general and of Vietnamese men in particular, regardless how much he loves their children, he keeps it for himself and does not want to share it with the children.
Because of the same reason, there have been many cases where children mistook their Father for not loving them, but only their mother loved them, so when they were grown-up and became independent, they did not have any gratitude to the Father, as the children did not realize that the Father’s time and effort dedicated to his jobs to earn the living of the whole family are more valuable than the hardship the Mother has to endure while taking care of the children at home, especially when their parents helped them to pay their tuitions in colleges. After graduating from college, they don’t have to pay any student loans borrowed from the government, and yet they do not pay any respect and love to their parents. Today is Father’s Day, I just want to tell the following true story about the two children who mistreated a respectable and pitiful Father:
Mr. Huynh has 2 children, one boy and one girl, both children were born 5 years apart, one is in high school, and the other is in elementary school, his wife suffers from incurable disease, so she cannot work. He is the only one in the family working to support his family. For more than 40 years, he had held a labor job. During the day he worked for a company manufacturing iron railroads, and other metallic items for building contractors. The work he performed was quite heavy, and if any manufactured items were too heavy, he must drive a forklift truck to move those items from one place to another in the workshop.
Although he had to work 8 hours a day in the factory, he only had 4 hours working indoors, and the other 4 hours worked outdoors, driving a forklift to load ordered merchandises on delivery trucks transporting these items to different locations; these 4 hours were very demanding of him, especially on hot, rainy or sunny all day long. After 4 hours of working he felt exhausted and running out of breath. However, when he got home in the afternoon, he could only rest for a maximum of 30 minutes, then he had to drive to a restaurant to cook for 4 more hours; he didn’t get home until 10 pm. Totally he had to work 12 hours a day and he could only sleep for a maximum of 5 hours a night, trying to earn enough money to support his family and to pay for the tuition of the two children going to college; thus, after graduating they did not have to pay any penny to the government.
After 4 years of college, the son graduated with a degree in computer engineering, and the daughter graduated with a degree in pharmacy, both of them had good jobs. Then a few years later his wife died of cancer of last stage, there was no medicine to cure her cancer. A few months after his wife’s death, he retired, and he remained single, he stayed at home with his two children for one year. Then, both of his children asked his permission to move out of their home; they reasoned that both of them have overs, and they need to have private lives. Considering that their requests were reasonable, he had to pretend to be happy to accept their requests, and he continued to live alone in a house with plenty of memories of his wife and 2 children. Having lived alone for 2 years, one day he stumbled and suffered pain in his legs for several months in a row, unsteady walking, even though his mind was very lucid, but he could not cook for himself. Alone, he had to move to a nursing home.
Once I visited him, he confided to me with teary eyes, telling me that both of his children living not far from the nursing home, it would take about 20 minutes of driving to get here, they were still single, but they only visited him once a week, each time for a maximum of about 30 to 40 minutes. Actually, he said: “Deacon San knows that I do not in need of money, but now that I am old and weak, I have to live in a nursing home like this, my wife is dead, my family members, besides my 2 children, there were no one else living in this city; sometimes I feel so lonely because I miss my two dear children; I only wish to see them more often instead of having them come to visit me only once a wee. They don’t need to do anything for me, just coming to see me, that would spiritually comfort me a lot”.
He continued: “Indeed, if in fact, they had a family, then they had to be busy taking care of their spouses and children, and had no free time to visit me often, then I would have been very sympathetic to their situation; or if when they were young, I treated them poorly, neglected in taking care of them, then I would have not dared to complain to you about my unfortunate situation and my loneliness at this time. It is said that the husband or the father who mistreated his wife and children or irresponsible toward them, then sooner or later, he would suffer the painful consequences caused by his own children or wife. In the contrary, I examined my self determined that I had sacrificed my whole life, as a husband and father of two children, working hard to raise them to grow up, helped them materialistically and spiritually , from food to clothes, from the times they got sick to the times they bacame healthy, etc.; not only did I encourage them but also provide them with maximum financial support for them to earn professional college degrees. Unfortunately, now for some reason, they did not think about the merit of giving birth of their parents to them, and of nurturing them. Thanks to the parents they have become successful in life. I am longing deeply in my heart for a simple thing to happen is that: they coming to visit me more often, before I close my eyes forever to leave this fleeting life”.
“I hope that you will write an article about my confidences to you as stated above for our children and grandchildren to read, so that young people will understand more deeply the feelings of old people and their loneliness, how much the love their parents giving them. The parents do not expect the children to repay them with material, money and wealth, but only to look forward to meeting their children and grandchildren as they are visiting with their parents or grandparents when they are old and approaching the end of their lives. It is the most precious, most blissful happiness in this world before the parents or grandparents have to leave this world for good”; he said at the end of my visit with him.
Deacon San M. Nguyễn
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