Just An Ounce Of Hope

Chapter 4: The Childs Downfall

Song: Hunnah - Stay (This has been one of my favorite songs after I watched season 2 of All American🙃)

May 21, 2016 (Around 2 in the morning)
    Waking up after what feel like three hours of sleep, I realized that the kitchen lights were on. Rolling onto my side, I watched perplexingly as my parents and aunt were kneeling on the ground in front of ông ngoại's bed. It seemed like they were praying, but what for? He's the strongest person I know, and he will make it through this I told myself. I laid there staring at them, clueless of what was to come. After a while, Ba realized that I was awake.

"Ông Ngoại chết rồi." Were the four words that my dad said to me before turning back facing my grandfather's limp body.

Some type of coldness seeped into my bones, as if someone left a door open for the cold night to come crashing in. Goosebumps began to appear on my skin, the chilling feeling of wind passing me.

"He can't be," I muttered quietly to myself.

Scanning the scenario, I shut my eyes. Rubbing my eyes, I opened them once again, but this nightmare didn't seem to end. Repeating this multiple times, I soon discovered that this frantic nightmare was coming true.

In a split-second Cam came running down the stairs balling his eyes out, but I still sat there staring at my parents, with not one single tear in either of my eyes. Was something wrong with me? Why wasn't I crying about this?

Standing up, I walked up the stairs into my parents' room and I sit on the bed staring at the vanity mirror. Looking at my reflection, I intensely stared at myself. Looking at myself in the mirror, everything began to hit me like thousands of bricks falling from the sky. I was never going to see him again. The bright lights began to dim, leaving me in complete darkness. The darkness absorbed all the colors in my world. Yellows and purples, to blacks, and greys. My tongue went numb, my throat dried. I began to cry, and everything worsened when I realized that the only person who truly was by my side all these years was ông ngoại.

"How could I be so dumb and doubt him?" I told myself. "It's all my fault! If I had never doubted him, he'd still be here!" I frantically whispered to myself as I paced around the room.

I soon found the courage to go downstairs and it took the rest of the strength in my body to walk down those stairs. Everyone was crying in agony, and going down there only made me sob even more, but only this time I cried for hours.

By 3 pm, ông ngoại's body was taken away to the morge. We all cried as we watched them take his pale and frail body away from his home. I cried hysterically once again next to my cousins.

Bà ngoại stayed in their room for the next few days. She stopped eating and leaving the room, and no one stopped her. Who am I kidding? I'd do the exact same thing too if I was able to, but no, I was once again forced to go to school that following Monday.

Every day after his death, I'd sneak silently into her room to give her the food that mommy made for her that she always refused, but when I got home, her plate would not be as full as a few hours before.

May 27, 2016
Thankfully my parents let me stay home today so that I'd be able to go to the funeral. Yesterday my cousin Krystal flew from Iowa with my uncle when they found out that ông ngoại died. Surprisingly it was the most normal day we had within this month because Cam and I were able to get our minds off ông ngoại by spending time with Krystal.

I woke up around five this morning in Cam's room on the ground lying next to Krystal. Out of the three of us I woke up the earliest, and so, I went downstairs quietly making sure that I didn't wake anyone up. I sat at the dining table with Ba and my uncle as they were sipping some coffee. It was as if the silence was a daily occurrence in our lives, and by then, I didn't really think of it.

By two I decided to get ready for the funeral. Taking a chilling cold shower, I dressed myself in a black dress with small tiny daisy-like flowers. I had black leggings under, and I wore black and white polka-dot heels. I curled my hair after I blow dried it, and I put on my silver flower earrings that had a diamond in the center.

Today was Yuri's prom and so her parents decided that she should spend this day with her friends rather than being at the funeral.

We got to the place where the funeral was taking place in, at four. The reason why we brought so many things were so we could display the food in front of the picture we had of ông ngoại so he could "eat", it was pretty much like a small shrine. By six thirty, two of the monks arrived and they began the ritual.

My parents, bà ngoại, my two aunts and their husbands, Cam my brother, my two cousins Kai and Krystal, and I did this ritual with the two monks, from start to finish. For an hour and a half, we all kneeled on the ground, our hands clasped together as if we were praying. During the ritual, we would kneel on the carpet floor, and when the bell rang, we would stand up and bow three times, and we would then kneel once more to bow another three times. Every time we bowed and kneeled, my forehead would always make contact with the floor whether it hurt or not.

After this ceremony, the monks gave a speech about ông ngoại even though they never even met him.

I became a bit tired and so I went over to my mom. When I first approached her, I didn't know that she was talking to someone until it was too late.

"Vicky, how are you doing? You've grown so much from the last time I saw you!" One of my mom's close friends told me.

When I looked at my mom's friend, I felt agitated. All I wanted to say was "Are you seriously going to ask how I'm doing as we're at my grandfather's funeral?! As you can see, I'm not doing well. I've been crying for the past week, haven't you noticed?"

She then proceeded to say, "Oh, you must miss your grandfather so much huh?"

I froze like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. That was when I began to sob once again. My entire body was cold as if I was 47 meters underwater. Even with my mother next to me, no one, absolutely No One comforted me. Eleven-year-old Vicky sat there with agony filling her lungs as she wept in front of over fifty people at that funeral, and not a single soul came to her rescue.

May 28, 2016
I woke up the next day and did the exact routine as yesterday, but this time we left at twelve. I had my new bracelet that one of the monks gifted me yesterday at the ceremony. It was a black beaded bracelet and Cam had the same one but with cream beads.

We did the exact same ritual as yesterday, but it was two hours this time. One of Ba's friend facetimed my two uncles from Vietnam this time because they couldn't come. It wasn't that they were too busy, it was because they didn't have enough money to come and that they didn't have passports or Visa's to come visit America. The sky was clear today and after the ritual all our relatives and friends carried the wreaths of flowers outside. These wreaths varied in many colors even though they were made of real flowers. Every single one of these flower wreaths had banners on them informing us who gifted them to us and giving us their condolences.

The following thing we did was drive to a large graveyard with a crematorium. The monks did another speech and sooner or later, everyone went to the other section where there weren't any benches to sit.

Hours before any of this started my family decided that the oldest child of my grandfathers was to press the button for him to be cremated and that was my aunt, Hannah. My aunt Hannah was the oldest child of ông ngoại. The hardest thing was when she pressed the button and we all shrieked and wailed in unison.

Falling onto my knees I sobbed into my tiny hands. Having no clue on what to do, I watched in misery as my mother comforted Cam during this time.

When it was over, my three cousins, Cam, and I emerged out of the church-like building. All five of us got into Yuri's car and we cried. It was as if the tears couldn't stop, like an endless waterfall.

If only I knew that this was going to be the final time where I was going to feel normal.

07.11.2020