From Chapter One: My First Funeral

I died on June 15, 1985, when I was fifty-nine years old. My death was not natural. I died escaping Vietnam with my wife and my three younger children, hoping to reunite with my six older children who were living in Canada, halfway around the world. I died in the Pacific Ocean, trying to shorten the distance between us all.

My soul arrived at the door of Heaven. I knelt in front of God. “Please allow me to postpone my entrance.”

God showed me the Book of Heaven. “Your name is written right here. It is your time to walk through this door. Hurry, it is about to close.”

I begged God, “Let me live as a ghost. Let the dead stay with the living. Let my soul stay with my children.”

“Why would you want more suffering?” God asked. “In Heaven, you are free of the living, at eternal peace. Give me one good reason to let you live as a ghost.”

“When I died,” I replied, “I could still hear my children’s cries. I hear the tears in their hearts. I will do anything for my wife and our children, God. Please, I beg you to let my soul live on as a ghost.”

“Is my Heaven meaningless to you? Death comes when your physical being can no longer endure pain. It is a relief to be done with your time on earth. It is time for your tired soul to rest. Why would you want to prolong your agony?”

God seemed puzzled. “It is strange to hear such a request. What can you do for your wife and your children with your helpless soul? Living as a ghost, you will still have your memories but will not be able to talk. You will want to forget, but you will remember. You will feel, but touch will be impossible. You will want to cry but will have no tears. You will be present only to yourself, invisible to the living, caught between life and death.”

God paused to listen and heard the anguished cries of my surviving children, my dead children, my wife, my mother, my dead father, my grandchildren, my brothers, my sisters and my friends. God realized that, in death, I was still suffering and stopped lecturing me.

“I still cannot accept being taken away from my wife and my children.”

“Perhaps you need to find the answers on your own.” God granted my wish and released my soul.

I rushed to Côn Sơn Island, near where the boat sank, to the site where the communist government imprisoned those who tried to escape their own country and were captured at sea. Before the fall of Saigon in 1975, the South Vietnamese government used the island to incarcerate notorious criminals and to torture communists. Many communists or citizens who were accused of being communists were executed or murdered. There were more prisons on this island than homes, more nameless graves than those with tombstones, and many mass graves waiting to be discovered. Côn Sơn Island was home to many ghosts of the present and the past. I heard the weary cries of those who had died unjust deaths and those who died fighting to liberate South Vietnam. Their souls longed for the living to come to this island, to discover and collect their corpses. They dreamed of proper burial ceremonies, close to their living families. The spirits of the dead suffered in agony; the living endured in misery.

I found my wife and my two young sons. They were lying on a dirty mat in a filthy cell with many other prisoners. I recognized some of them—they were my fellow escapees. My wife wept silently. My sons tried to comfort their mother even as tears dripped from the corners of their own eyes.

“Where is Lan Phương?” I asked my wife. “Phổ and Phấn, Father is here. I am right beside you,” I screamed, then realized they could not see or hear me. I crumbled to the ground.

Then I heard the familiar voice of our youngest daughter. “Father, is that you?”

“Lan Phương!” I hugged her and she wrapped her arms around me. She could feel me. We felt each other. Then I understood that she was just like me—a ghost with a confused soul that could not rise to Heaven.

“Father, where were you? What happened to us?” asked Lan Phương, her voice trembling.

I held her tiny hands. Our souls flew to the place on the sea where the boat had gone down. Our souls sank under the water and found dead bodies still trapped in the hull, other corpses slowly rising to the surface. We saw miserable souls clinging to their lifeless, drifting bodies. We heard the wails of other anguished ghosts, desperately searched for their remains. We avoided the chaos and sat on a piece of debris, our weightless souls floating on angry waves under a dark purple sky.

“Father, why are we here?”

“Út,” I said, using the affectionate term for a youngest child, “we both died from drowning. I am so very sorry I could not save you. Somehow my body is on land, and yours is floating somewhere in this ocean.”

She turned and gave me a gentle smile. “But we are still together!”

“We are together in death.”

As she started to understand, I could no longer see her clearly. Her voice faded and her words became indistinct. She let go of my hand.

I tried to grasp her arm. “Lan Phương, please stay with me! Don’t leave me alone!” But she could not hear me. Then I could see her no more.

I returned to the island and found my body on the beach, above the tideline. My remains had been placed inside a black plastic bag. The next morning, two prison guards brought my wife to identify my body, which had been moved inland to a burial spot a bit further from the shore. A shovel had been placed beside it. They opened the body bag. She confirmed my identity and signed a paper verifying that my death resulted from a betrayal of my country. An official took a picture of my corpse and attached it to his file.

Left alone, she removed my remains from the bag. Then she dug a shallow grave and searched the area for stones to place around my body. She wept alone for a long time, rubbing her tears onto my eyes so that we could mourn together. Just yesterday, we had been embracing each other, dreaming of a bright future, anticipating a reunion with all our children. Now she was heartbroken, suffering in the living world while I watched over her, helpless. Eventually she rolled up the bag and carefully placed it under my feet. My body would decompose faster and be easier to exhume later. Then she began shovelling sand over my body.

When we fell in love, my wife asked me if I would still love her when she was no longer young and beautiful. She wondered if Heaven would take both of us from the earth at the same time so that we would always be together. Now I wished I could tell her the answer to both questions.

“My dearest wife, my love for you is eternal. I loved you in life and now also in death. I could not step through the Door of Heaven. I want to be with you, to drift beside you as a ghost, to continue loving you as a ghost. I would be lonely if I stayed in Heaven while you remained on this earth. My conscience torments me for leaving you to take care of our children on your own. I want to continue to carry out my responsibilities as best as I can. I will wait for you, forever, in life and in death.

“We will see each other again. I will wait for you as a ghost, and when you approach the Door of Heaven, I will be there to greet you. We will hold hands and enter together.”