Filial Piety

My parents, 2019

My family came to the United States in 1975 as refugees of the Vietnam War. I was born a year later.

We were sponsored by a Lutheran church in Belmont, California. The kind people there helped my parents land on their feet—finding work, learning English, and starting over. With that early support, my dad got a job at an engineering firm, and my mom began studying English. By 1980, they had moved to Newark, California, where they bought a home and raised my three older sisters and me. In many ways, the “American Dream” came quickly.

Although U.S. involvement in the war remains deeply controversial, my family’s life would not have been possible without American support for the South Vietnamese people.

My dad spent most of his life as a civil engineer with the state transportation department. My mom worked as an assembly technician for years before somehow—quietly, incredibly—working her way up to a computer engineering role at Intel just before she retired. They’ve both been retired now for over a decade.

In the spring of 2017, my father had a benign tumor the size of a baseball removed from his brain cavity. Although doctors expected a full recovery, the aftermath was different: his mobility declined, and his cognitive function quickly faded.

This is what every morning looked like for the two years that followed.

Update:

On November 23, 2022, my father died at 12:23pm. He died peacefully in his sleep. All of his children and many of his family members were able to say their goodbyes the week before.

The day after, I went through all of the family photo albums and found the following photos. I don't know who took these pictures, but I am eternally grateful.

Eulogy

My name is Tony Van Le, and I’m here to say goodbye to my father, Diep Ngoc Le, and celebrate his life. I am the youngest of his four children.

There’s a lot to celebrate! He was a great man! He managed to safely get my mother and sisters over to the United States. He made sure that he brought over the rest of his family later on. He provided a comfortable life for us kids. He achieved the American Dream, and he made sure he put us kids in a position to achieve it as well. Asking for any more from him as a man and father would probably just be greedy.

My father was a quiet and even-keeled man. When he spoke, his words had weight.

At the dinner table, as I was growing up, he’d ask me here and there over the years which religion I thought was correct. Whatever my response was, he’d tell me the actual answer was unknowable. He considered himself a Buddhist and prayed to the Buddha every night at the shrine he had constructed in his living room. Yet he ate dinner under a picture of Jesus Christ. I believe this was to remind him that it was a Christian Lutheran Church that sponsored our family when we first came to the US and gave us advantages that few that come to this country (looking for better lives) ever receive.

He was a funny guy. He enjoyed wordplay and pointing out oddities of the English language. He had a way of thinking that was all his own. One example is when he’d take me to the store, he’d let me run around by myself. When it was time to go, he would let me know by clucking his tongue. Cluck cluck cluck. I’d hear that and I’d be like “oh, it’s time to go.”

Another example of his unique way of thinking, is how one year, when one of my last baby teeth had come loose, he had me go into the bathroom, and he tied dental floss around that loose tooth. He then tied the other end of the dental floss to the doorknob of the bathroom door. I’ll let you imagine what he did next. He was an engineer, but he had a funny way about him.

As a civil engineer, he spent the latter half of his career working for Caltrans. I don’t know much about what he did there, but he did tell me two things that I’ll never forget.

Back in the 90s until at least 2011 on highway 880 in Oakland, a section of it is built off the ground, above the city. In this section, the northbound and southbound lanes (that are usually connected) separate for a little bit. And it looks like it is separated so that the tree that was already growing beneath didn’t have to be cut down when they constructed the freeway. Whenever I drove by this tree, I thought it was so interesting. Over the years, it became a kind of symbol of sorts to me. I’m not exactly sure what it represented, but there was a message about man and nature in there somewhere. I contemplated it every time I drove past it.

After years of driving by it, I finally drove by it one day with my dad in the car with me. I brought up how I loved that tree, and how cool it was that the freeway parted for it. He nonchalantly told me that he was the one that designed the freeway to wrap around that tree so that it wouldn’t need to get cut down. I was beside myself in disbelief! What were the chances that my dad was the one responsible for that tree! I was trippin’! But I couldn’t quite explain to him why it was such an amazing coincidence because he was too busy telling me about some other tree he had saved down in Gilroy.

That could be a microcosm for our relationship right there.

Another thing he told me about his time at Caltrans was that he was on the team that designed those electronic signs on the freeways and bridges that tell you how many minutes you are away from the three major destinations ahead. Whenever I see one of those signs, I will always think of him.

He was a creative spirit. As a creative spirit myself, this is where I feel my most profound connection with him. I inherited his love for photography and music.

He had countless musical instruments. The strangest instrument he had was a musical saw. It looked like a standard saw (used to cut down a tree or something), but it was wobblier and more flexible. When hit with a mallet, it would make strange oscillating and undulating sounds. Almost like a metallic didgeridoo.

He had a clarinet, a saxophone, and *so* many string instruments. The instrument he dedicated the latter part of his life to learning was a Vietnamese one-stringed zither. For those unfamiliar, think of that Chinese guy playing that instrument on the outskirts of Chinatown. It’s an instrument like that, but longer and with softer, silkier, less metallic tones. He spent years practicing the Christmas song “Silent Night” on that monochord every evening before going to bed. He pursued his creativity for joy, not for perfection. He did it because he loved it, and it brought him comfort.

The greatest lesson that he ever taught me was that he showed me “how to be.” He never told me “how to be” specifically. Like I said, he was a quiet guy. He just was who he was. But it wasn’t hard to see who he was.

He was stable, diligent, and dependable. Every weeknight, after a long day of work, after dinner, he would teach us kids math for an hour. He was patient, kind, and unassuming. These are the qualities that he modeled for me, for us.

He is still stronger than me at all those things. To this day, these are the qualities that I strive to nurture in myself. And when I do, I will be honoring him.

Thank you, Ba, for being such a great father and role model.

I love you.