17 June 2011 Volume: 21 Issue: 11 Australia's ... - Eureka Street

Volume 21 Issue: 1117 June 2011Tuc told me he was touched by the welcome he and other Vietnamese had received fromAnglo-Celtic Australians. Once, he told me I was like an egg. ‘How so?’ I asked ‘You are whiteon the outside and yellow inside,’ was his witty retort.When my mother first met him she asked him what he did in Vietnam ‘Kill communists,’replied Tuc. Mum, who had moved from the DLP to support the Liberals, was not terriblyshocked. This was his sense of humour, but it also reflected the seriousness of what it meant tobe involved in a civil war.I visited Vietnam a few times and told Tuc about it. I explained how busy Saigon was, andall the shops and businesses that I saw. I told him about the beautiful singing in the cathedralin Saigon during the mass I attended.Tuc had not returned to Vietnam and I encouraged him to return to see some family there.Tuc said he was afraid to go back because of what the communists might do to him. I tried toreassure him that they would not touch him as he would have his brother the lawyer withhim. Tuc smiled, but was not convinced. I learnt how the traumatic experiences of refugeescan stay with them for years.Over the years I attended the weddings of Tuc’s daughter and son. He was very proud ofthem as they had both completed studies at University. He was also very fond of hisgrandchildren. Whenever I asked him how he was, he would tell me he was ‘flat out like adrinking lizard’.This year Tuc did not call me for Tet. I thought how slack I had been for not calling him,instead.Then one day he called. I thought he was going to rouse on me in his kind way for nothaving our Tet meal. But he story was more serious. He was very sick in hospital with cancer.I was shocked, and I went to hospital to visit him. He was clearly ill. I stayed for a whileand then he told me I should go; astute enough, despite his illness, to point out that I needed$8 in coins to pay for parking at the hospital. His practical side never left him.The last time I saw him I showed him some photos of Vietnam. It was easier than talkingabout his deteriorating health. I also took him a pair of mum’s rosary beads that had beensitting in the back of a drawer since Mum died a few years before. Tuc held the beads as welooked through the photos. He told me ‘our mother will be with me now’.The next morning he rang me and told me how he had had the best sleep for a long timeand thanked me for the rosary beads.Tuc died on what would have been Mum’s 85th birthday. We never did travel to Vietnamtogether, but I was very lucky to have met him. Every Tet I will still remember him with ‘chucmung na moi’.©2011 EurekaStreet.com.au 28