To Live Is to Be Remembered

It is only through the lives our ancestors led that our existence is possible.

In Vietnamese culture, ancestor worship is blended into the country’s dominant religion as an entanglement with Buddhism and Confucianism. Family is upheld to a high level of importance, spanning outside of the living through honoring and paying respect to those who came before us. 

An aspect of ancestor worship is celebrating đám giỗ, or death anniversary parties. The purpose of đám giỗ is to celebrate and honor the lives of those who have passed and to have a reason for the family to gather and congregate continuously. Growing up, the largest đám giỗ was in celebration of my ông ngoại, or maternal grandfather. Though, I was given limited information on the other celebrations of đám giỗ and the people they were honoring. This inspired me to write a collection of short stories about the lives of those who came before me, those whose memories are not as clearly remembered. 

While preparing this collection of short stories, I interviewed my relatives and elders who host and prepare these đám giỗ, to document the lives of those we celebrate. Through this process, I couldn’t help but notice how the lives of our ancestors, who we hold to such high importance, are slowly being forgotten as time and generations pass. To honor my ancestors, I wrote their stories, memorializing them to withstand the passage of time.

Through sharing these stories, I hope to spark curiosity in others regarding their ancestors and how they influence the lives we lead today. Understanding their experiences, as well as extracting their knowledge, is important in leading a life that spiritually connects the past to the present. By learning our ancestors’ stories, the obstacles they faced, and the lessons they learned, we can learn to guide ourselves through our lives. 

To me, that is what it truly means to have the ancestors guiding you. 

Không có bùn mới có sen/Without mud, how can there be a lotus? (1956): 

At twenty years old, Bà 5 married the man who she anticipated to spend her life with, who she would bear children with, and who she would continue her lineage with. Being the eldest daughter, yet still the second youngest, her family arranged for her to marry a good man from a reputable family — one so reputable that they owned a pagoda or chùa. Managing a chùa reflected the moral values of a family as well as connection to spirituality, so it was believed that through this match only prosperity could follow her life and their lineage.

However, barely a year into their marriage, Bà 5’s husband found another lover and rarely returned home to his wife. Despite Bà 5’s greatest efforts to perform as a good wife, maintaining the home and preparing warm meals for her husband, the blame of the fallen marriage fell on her and pushed her into a deep depression — not just from the shame she felt, but also from the shame she felt she brought upon her family. Since her family had found her a perfect match, one that came from such a morally and spiritually rich family, the errors in her marriage had to have originated from her wrongdoing. In order to correct her misdoings in a way that would still uphold her family’s status and honor, she asked her aunt-in-law, her husband’s mother’s sister, permission to enter her chùa, and đi tu, or retreat into a convent. 

Living in the chùa, specifically Chùa Bùi Bửu which still stands today in Dĩ An city, brought a quiet and peaceful life to Bà 5. Initially, her tasks were simple: washing dishes, raking the fallen leaves in the temple garden, and dusting the bàn thờ, or altars. However, the true task was to be fully present in each motion, each movement. In true Buddhist belief, peace could only arrive when the mind and body connected and were truly living in the present moment, when each breeze was acknowledged, each grain of rice appreciated. Bà 5 came to understand that without her husband’s infidelity, she never would have learned to appreciate the beauty of life in the most simplest way, as how could the beauty of this life she led, how could a beautiful lotus exist and bloom without the dirt and mud?

As years, then decades passed, Bà 5 rose in rank as a devoted monk to Chùa Bùi Bửu. Her glowing orange robe was an indication of the high status she held in the chùa. The long onyx locks she once cared for in her youth had long ago been exchanged for a shaven head. Eventually, when Bà 5 passed away, she was monumentalized on the chùa’s bàn thờ, forever being prayed to, visited, and cleaned by other new monks who may have entered the chùa for similar reasons as her own. Despite never conforming to Vietnamese society’s expectations of womanhood, of motherhood, her legacy lives on as Chùa Bùi Bửu became the gathering place, the chùa, that her brother’s descendants would gather for generations to come.

Lá lành đùm lá rách/Whole leaves wrap torn leaves (1947): 

Every morning, before the rooster crowed and the sun would rise, Bà cố 3 would prepare to start her day. Exiting her nhà trệt, or ground-leveled house, she would slip on her open toed slippers and ornament herself a nón lá, or a conical rice hat. 

Bà cố 3 was a simple woman, who led a simple life. Those who didn’t know Bà cố 3 would assume she was a widower; however, in reality, Bà cố 3 never married and never sought to. Instead, she tasted motherhood when her younger sister passed away from illness, resulting in Bà cố 3 taking in all five of her sister’s children. Being the sole caretaker to that many children was no easy feat; however Bà cố 3 was a successful woman who ran a successful business and provided each child with a middle-class upbringing. 

Unlike most women in Việt Nam, Bà cố 3 did not rely on a man to support her life. She did, however, rely on sisterhood to fuel her business. Her chị 2, her eldest sister, had married a man from Đà Lạt, a steadily developing city in the mountains. Together, Bà cố 3 and her chị 2 were merchants who ran a trading business. Đà Lạt, a mountainous city, had a particular climate that was rare across the tropical biome of Việt Nam, allowing agricultural products such as artichokes, persimmons, and even strawberries to grow. When visiting her sister, Bà cố 3 would bring wholesale goods from Sài Gòn to Đà Lạt, and on her return would likewise bring wholesale products from Đà Lạt back to Sài Gòn.

On days when Bà cố 3 would depart to take the 16-hour train ride to Đà Lạt on a railroad that was built by the French, she would prepare cá mắm trứng kho tiêu, or braised salted fish with egg and black pepper, to ensure that her sister’s children’s mouths would be fed. Bà cố 3 understood survival in ways other women didn’t, having to fully rely on herself and her own abilities to feed the mouths of the children she raised. Despite the difficulties, Bà cố 3 preferred this lifestyle, never being controlled by a man and being able to go as she pleased.

Upon arriving to Đà Lạt, Bà cố 3 walked the many meters towards her sister’s home, carrying merchandise in woven baskets. The air there felt clear and clean, due to Đà Lạt being so heavily forested and lacking the dense population that existed in her home in Sài Gòn. Bà cố 3 looked towards the trees framing the dirt path she was trekking, observing the wholeness of each vibrantly green leaf, and knew that, despite being without a husband, she was whole. Her wholeness, encompassing her independence and strength, would be what mended the tattered leaves of the orphaned children she cared for, fulfilling a role both a mother and a father would occupy. 

Epilogue: Uống nước nhớ nguồn/When drinking the water, remember the source

Near Chợ Thủ Đức, the marketplace of Thủ Đức district, lays a hẻm, or alleyway, which is often overlooked. Inside this hẻm lives a family, though perhaps more so a clan, which has inhabited the land for many generations. This land, passed down from ông ngoại’s lineage, holds the memory of the past and the vitality of the present, as the Võ family continues to occupy the space that their ancestors walked on, breathed on, and lived on.

This is why we remember our ancestors.