2020 kicked off just fine. I started skiing for the first time in my life. I loved it. I spent 12 hours almost every Saturday in the winter with my sons, Đạo and Đán. We bonded over skiing, Gatorade, and sushi.

As we wrapped up the winter, the pandemic hit the U.S. Each day, the numbers of COVID-19’s cases and deaths escalated. The lockdown began. Although we struggled, we managed to keep ourselves isolated and safe. My wife and I worked 100 percent of our time from home. Both of our jobs were even more productive at home. Our two older sons, Đạo and Đán, switched to online school. We pulled our third son, Xuân, out of daycare. Our mother-in-law and our fourth son, Vương, already stayed home. The house was always chaotic, but filled with love.

To keep us and the kids active, we started doing more outdoor activities like biking and boating. My sister-in-law and her husband bought four kayaks and a canoe. We went boating three or four times a week. Then we started rollerblading, which had become my favorite exercise. I often dragged the kids out with me to the skate parks or bike trails to rollerblade. When we went out, we maintained social distance and enforced masking for all of our kids. Although we made a drastic change in our lives, we adjusted just fine. I thought we could ride this out until 2021.

In the summer, I spent my vacation redoing our deck. The woods had been in bad shape for years, but I knew it would cost a fortune to hire the professionals. With my wife’s meticulous planning and calculating, we replaced wooden boards with composite boards within three weeks and saved ourselves $12,000 or more.

One of the positive outcomes of the lockdown was that I spent lots of time with my kids, particularly the younger ones, Xuân and Vương. It was fascinating to witness their growing and progressing day by day. Because I didn’t have to get up early to get the kids ready for school and to drive to work, I spent early mornings and late nights reading and blogging, my two personal passion activities that kept sane during the lockdown.

June rolled around and my mother fell while taking a shower. She broke her bones and was hospitalized. Mid July she came home after being in rehab for a week. Everything seemed fine. I spent a few days with her. We talked, reconnected, and did some physical therapy to help her walk again. The outside world continued to collapse with the staggering increases of COVID-19’s new cases and death tolls. We were disheartening, but our family members were still safe.

Then one early morning in August, I received a phone call from one of my sisters in Việt Nam informing me that our father had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The doctors said nothing they could do for him. My brother and sisters in Việt Nam took him home and cared for him. I wanted to go back to Việt Nam to see him, but the Vietnamese government had suspended entry into Việt Nam to all foreigners. I was hoping that he could hold on until 2021 so I could see him in person, but he didn’t make it past November, 2020.

When he passed, I spent time with my mother and we watched his funeral service together through live steam. We were devastated, but we still had each other. We talked about his life and his legacy. As much as I loved my father, I didn’t have a strong connection with him because I had become accustomed to being away from him for so long. Although he was gone, his place in my heart remained the same. My mother probably felt the same way about him.

Because of his absence in our lives, my mother and I meant the whole world to each other. We consoled each other and tried to move forward. Even though my mother had trouble walking, she was still strong, both her mind and her appetite. We enjoyed eating sweet sticky rice together every morning. We even split up a bottle of Starbucks’ Frappuccino and filled up our halves with whole milk. We lay in bed and talked to each other. When she fell asleep, I read. I treasured those moments together. Before I went back home, I told her that I wouldn’t bring the kids to see her this Thanksgiving because of the pandemic and she understood.Thanks goodness, we weren’t here for Thanksgiving. I can’t even imagine if our family also got infected.

Although I lost my father, somehow I had a feeling that 2020 was far from over. When COVID-19 could not reach us, it touched the person closest to us. My mother tested positive on December 9, 2020. December 10, 2020 kicked off the darkest days of my entire life up to this point. I lived through guilt, pain, frustration, disappointment, rage, fear, regret, distress, shame, uncertainty, and hopelessness. On December 28, just three days away from the end of 2020, COVID-19 took away the love of my life. I was beyond devastated. I lost both of my parents within 42 days.

Without the strong support from family and friends, I didn’t know how I could keep myself together. When I hit rock bottom, true friends and family lifted me up. They showed up when I needed them the most. I learned the value of relationships beyond my little world. No matter what I had done or said in the past, no matter how little we interacted with each other, no matter how long I had neglected our friendships, they came through to lend their support. I made a promise to myself that I will become a better friend in 2021 and forward. I will do what they had done for me when I had to face the toughest challenges in my life.

As much as I wanted to move on and to forget, 2020 will forever burn into my brain. It has changed me in a profound way up to this point of my life. I don’t think I can ever go back to the old me prior to December 10, 2020. I now look at life from a different angle.

In my mother’s obituary, I wrote that she loved to live in America because she believed the U.S. has one of the best healthcare systems in the world. It might have the best medical technologies in the world, but it failed her on the level of compassion. Even though the outcome came out the same, it played by the codes instead of the cares.

I also wrote about her cooking process, which took so long because she washed everything over and over again. Washing hands for 20 seconds was not a problem for her. I watched her wash her hands for two minutes. She even rinsed clean bowls and utensils with hot water before each use. How ironic was that she had been so careful all her life, and yet she died from contracting the virus?

Life was unexpected and unpredictable. The line between living and dying was so thin at the critical moment. I hope I won’t ever have to make another life-and-death decision for the rest of my life. I read about death, wrote about death, understood the inescapable part of death, and yet, I could not deal with death when the person I have loved all my life was facing death. I could not imagine not hearing her voice over the telephone asking me if I ate already. I could not imagine not seeing her hugging my children and letting them kiss her on her cheeks. I could not imagine life without her.

Last night, I woke up around midnight and felt hungry. I went downstairs to grab some cereal and milk without turning on the lights. I glanced over to her room. The night light was glowing. Her pillows and blankets were still there. Her clothes and her walker were still there. She was not. I broke down and cried in silence. She will never return to this room. She will never return to the bed that I lay next to her just a month ago when we both grieved for the man in our lives we just lost. I held her hand and told her that everything will be OK because we still had each other. She stopped crying and squeezed my hand. The last time I held her hand, water seeped out of her swollen fingers. I told her everything will be OK. She didn’t squeeze me this time. Only a teardrop rolled down her right eye. Her heartbeat slowed way down until it stopped. She did not make it past 2020.

That was how my 2020 ended. I had been through hell and not quite back yet. So, to hell with 2020.

As children of Mrs. Anh Ngọc Lý, we deeply appreciate your expression of sympathy through phone calls, emails, and Facebook.

Due to the pandemic, she could not say goodbye to her family and friends for the last time. With technologies like Facebook and the web, family and friends can find out more information about our beloved Mrs. Lý.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the special love you have for her. For her memorial visitation, which will be held on Monday, January 4, 2021, we will have a live stream courtesy of the funeral home. If you would like to tune in, please visit Mrs. Anh Ngọc Lý’s obituary page from 9:00 am to 10:30 am (Eastern Time).

Dear family and friends,

A memorial visitation for our beloved Mrs. Anh Ngọc Lý will be held on Monday, January 4, 2021, from 9:00 am to 10:30 am, at:

Charles F. Snyder Funeral Home
3110 Lititz Pike
Lititz, PA 17543

Interment will follow at:

Bareville Union Cemetery
74 Brethren Church Road
Leola, PA 17540

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to:

Buddhist Association of PA
202 Cherry Street
Columbia PA 17512

Sunday evening I called into the ICU to get an update on my mom’s condition. Her nurse said she was still the same. I asked her to set up Blue Jeans (a video conference app) so I can see and talk to her. This time, the nurse put the camera really close to my mom’s face. To my dismay, her face and neck were like balloons. I checked yesterday’s screenshot she was not swollen that much. I showed the video to my sister and both our hearts sank. We decided immediately, it was time to pull the plug. Since it was already late and the doctors weren’t around, we decided to wait until the next day.

I didn’t talk much with my mom because I wanted to give my sister some time to talk to her. I lay down in bed, but could not sleep. I could not get her image out of my mind. I tried to read, but it was not helping. I finally went to sleep around three in the morning. I woke up around seven and felt tired. I sat down at my laptop and revised the obituary I had written, with my wife’s help in translating to Vietnamese. Around 9 am, I called in to let the nurse know that we were ready to come in to take the tubes out. She immediately got a hold of the doctor to talk to me. That wouldn’t happen if I didn’t tell her I wanted to pull the plug.

We made an arrangement to come into the ICU at noon. When we arrived at the front desk, a chaplain came down to bring us up. She took us to the waiting area and went in to get my mom’s nurse. When they came back, the nurse told us that she would take the tubes out first before we could come to see our mom. I asked her if we can see her first before she removed the tube. For our safety, she claimed that she didn’t want us in the room because the coronavirus would come out of my mom’s mouth. If that was the case, we could stand outside and watch or take a quick look outside the room before she removed the tubes. The nurse was instructed not to let us in until the tubes were off.

The medical team really wanted to pull the plug and they took every measure to make that happen. They didn’t want to take the risk of us backing out after we see our mother. I was sad and disappointed that they still treated us that way even though we were the ones that made the request to remove the tubes. I could have told her that I would not authorize to pull the plug unless we get a chance to see our mom first. We could just walk out right at that moment and let my mom continued on the ventilator, but I was too distress and too hurt to put up a fight. I didn’t want my mom to continued to suffer. My sister was in tears trying to plead with them. I told her let them take out the tubes.

When we came in, our mom was all swollen up. I held her hand and water seeped out of her skin. I apologized to her that I had kept her suffering. I asked her to forgive me and to please let go if the pain was too much to bare. I let her know that she will always be in my heart. I thanked her for all the sacrifices she had made throughout her life to raise me. I appreciated all the love and joy she had given me. I reassured her that I have become a man now and I will be able to take care of myself. She didn’t need to worry about me anymore. Tears rolled down her cheek.

My sister also talked to her and more tears came out of her closing eyes. We both stunned. Despite all the distortions and deteriorations caused by the machines, she was still beautiful. Her skin was still shiny and soft. Her hair was still smooth and silky. The wrinkles on her face showed the passing of time. She had lived a long, hard-knock life.

Five minutes later, the machine beeped continuously. The chaplain came in to informed us her heart had stopped. She passed away at 12:46 pm on December 28, 2020. Although I was able to get the last words in, I told her that our conversations will continue. I will always be her son even in our next life. Get some rest now, mommy. You deserve it.

Mrs. Anh Ngọc Lý, beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, wife, sister, and daughter, passed away at 12:46 pm on December 28, 2020, at the age of 83, following a brutal battle with COVID-19. Mrs. Lý was born on June 8, 1937, in Mỹ Tho, Việt Nam. She joined her oldest daughter Hương Ngọc Nguyễn and her family in Willimantic, Connecticut on April 11, 1990 then settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania a few months after to be close to her extended family.

Resided in Lancaster city, she had done various odd jobs, including inspecting t-shirts at a few sweatshops and picking fruits at several local farms, before joining Sauder’s Eggs, where she worked as an egg packer for over a decade before her retirement. When not working, she enjoyed cooking traditional Vietnamese cuisine at home. Her priority was making sure her children and grandchildren were well fed. She was always lavish with food. She never cut corners. She had to have the best sources and her cooking process had always been meticulous. If her lunch took five hours to make, her kids would have to eat at 3:30 pm. The stomach-growling waits were always worthwhile.

Mrs. Lý was a strong woman who held her own. Although she lived half the world apart from her late husband Tỷ Hữu Hồ who passed away on November 15, 2020, their marriage remained intact in the past three decades. Each Sunday, they called to check up on each other. She raised her second daughter Nikki Thơm Nguyễn and her youngest son Donny Trương all by herself in the U.S. while her husband lived in Việt Nam. Despite her limited English, she loved her life in America. She believed the U.S. had one of the best healthcare systems in the world.

Mrs. Lý was loved by everyone around her and those who got to know her. She was generous, compassionate, and kind. When her niece Karen Huỳnh (the daughter of her oldest sister Anh Kim Lý) was seven years old, she did something wrong. Karen was afraid that her father would spank her. Her mother was always busy with the family’s business; therefore, she couldn’t come to her to intervene. Karen ran away from home. Mrs. Lý took her niece in and took good care of her like her own daughter. Mrs. Lý never made any judgment about her niece. She let her niece stay with her for three days until her brother-in-law cooled down and forgot all about the incident. Half a century later, Karen still remembered vividly how well her aunt had fed her and treated her. Karen recalled her aunt letting her roam free in her garden and pick out any fruits she wanted to eat.

Having lived through the war in Việt Nam, Mrs. Lý had always been a fighter. She would survive anywhere on earth, including living in a foreign country like America. She had overcome many financial hardships, personal obstacles, and health issues as she aged. She fought COVID-19 until her very last breath.

Mrs. Lý is survived by her oldest daughter Hương Ngọc Nguyễn, her second daughter Nikki Thơm Nguyễn, her youngest son Donny Trương, and her daughter-in-law Hải Dung Nguyễn. She is also survived by her grandson Lộc Nguyễn, her granddaughter-in-law Jennifer Delima, her grandson Christopher Nguyễn, her granddaughter-in-law Amy Phương Ngô, her granddaughter Samantha Trần, her grandson Eric Trần, her grandson Đạo Công Trương, her grandson Đán Công Trương, her grandson Xuân Việt Trương, her grandson Vương Việt Trương, her great-granddaughter Isabella Nguyễn, her great-granddaughter Angela Nguyễn, and her great-grandson Aiden Nguyễn. Finally, she is survived by her brother Anh Văn Lý, her sister-in-law Lụa Thị Lý, her sister Anh Lý Teitler, her brother-in-law Sidney Teitler, and her extended family living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

As her family members and dear friends, we loved her deeply. We will always remember her and will hold her in our hearts for eternity. Farewell for now, our love. May your soul rest in peace.

I am sorry, mama. I can’t watch you, from afar, go on like this. Let’s put an end to all the suffering and torturing. I was hoping for a miracle, but there’s no such thing.

I have come to accept the reality that I will lose my dear mother on earth, but I will always have you in my heart and spirit. We will continue our conversations just like we were having through FaceTime these past few weeks. Although you were sedated, I knew you could hear me. I saw you nod your head when I talked.

I knew death was part of life and I had been prepared for the day that you would have to leave me. I was not ready to see you go this way. I couldn’t let COVID-19 take you away from me so abruptly. The doctors told me to let you go, but I was still holding on every bit of last hope. It has come to the point that nothing on this earth could help bring you back.

I had shed so many tears alone in your room thinking about you. I knew crying wouldn’t change anything, but I couldn’t help it. Writing to you and about you helped me cope with the reality at hand. I know I can always reach out to you through my thoughts and my words.

I will miss you dearly, but I know you will always be beside me like you had always been throughout my life. Please let yourself rest, mama. You had been through so much all your life. It’s time to set yourself free. I will meet you someday. Please save a place for me. I love you!

When my mom asked me to come to take care of her, I was terrified. I was about to live in the same house with three positive COVID-19 victims. The chance of me getting infected was high. When I tried to help my mom getting up out of her bed, she coughed on me and she couldn’t even put her mask on. I spent half an hour to an hour in her room each time to help her moved around.

Thanks to the masks, the face shields, the gloves, and the trash bags, I tested negative of COVID-19 over a week ago. As long as I take all the precautions, I shouldn’t have to be afraid of COVID. I didn’t know it until I lived through it. In retrospect, I could have intervene earlier. I could have done something for her. By the time I learned about my sister’s condition, it was already too late. I knew my mom already caught it and I hesitated to come until she told me to.

Although I have dodged the bullet, I wish I could be infected instead of her. If we could trade places right now, I would do it in a heartbeat. Watching her suffer is much more painful than suffering myself. Am I doing the right thing? Why don’t I pull the plug? What the fuck am I waiting for? A fucking miracle? Yes, a fucking miracle, indeed!

The doctor delivered more bad news. Her condition is getting worse. He urged us to think it over. If we pull the plug now, she will go within a couple of hours. If we keep going, she might be suffering.

My oldest sister pulled herself out of the decision-making responsibility. She doesn’t want to see her suffer, but she doesn’t want to pull the plug either. Unfortunately, we don’t have a third option.

Each minute my conscience tortures me, especially after talking to the doctor. The easier decision is to pull the plug and let her go. That’s the end of it. The harder decision is how far can we go? The doctors don’t seem to be optimistic about it. I respect their medical expertise, but I am still holding out hope if she can still hold on.

I don’t know if I am making the right decision for her. I am now living with this guilt inside me. What if we didn’t go this far? Would the outcome be the same either way? It looks like that’s where we’re heading.

Maria L. La Ganga writes for the Los Angeles Times:

Marilou, Michelle and Michael had not seen their husband and father in person for 36 days. They hadn’t held Bob’s hand or stroked his forehead. There’d been phone calls and texts and video meetings. But once he was placed on the ventilator, even his voice was silenced. In the cruel calculus of COVID-19, there was only one way they could be with him in the hospital.

If the ventilator was turned off. If he was about to die.

We’re now in similar situation and dilemma.

The doctor called everyday to tell me my mother’s condition was getting worse. Each time he let me know if she were his mother, he would cut her loose. I appreciated his suggestion, but she is not his mother. Until he is in the situation himself, it is easier said than done.

In our video call last night, I told my mom about her condition according to the doctor’s report. I asked her if she still has the strength to fight on. If not, she should just let herself go. I asked her to nod her head if she could hear me. I saw her head moved, but I was not sure if that was her response since she was sedated. At this point, we just have to keep going. Still water, still drawing (còn nước, còn tát).

After our conversation, we watched Paris by Night 18 on YouTube together. The Christmas program brought back so many fond memories. Don Hồ, Kenny Thái, Dalena, and Thái Tài were the young stars back then. Even Chí Tài, as a band leader, already showed his comic side in his performance. Rest in peace, anh Tài. When Ái Vân performed Đức Huy’s “Và con tim đã vui trở lại,” I couldn’t hold my tears. How I wished my mother’s heart could be full of joy again.

I wish you a wonderful holiday season with your loved ones. If you can be with your mother, don’t take it for granted. If you can’t be with her physically, which is not a bad thing this year, give her a call and tell her you love her.