LAST LETTER

My last letter from Dad was started on November 15th 1996, a day after my 40th birthday, with the last entry written on November 27th. He never sent it. Anh found it after his death and posted it to me on December 27th. A bitter sweet letter coming as it did posthumously.

November 15th was also the wedding anniversary of Dad and Tú. They received a certificate from Socialist Republic of Vietnam Service of Justice of Ho Chi Minh City on the 15th November, 1993. It was the result of lots of paper work but no ceremony. Dad was actually back in Australia at the time.

My father met Tú while in Vietnam as part of the AATTV – The Australian Army Training Team Vietnam, a specialist unit of military advisors of the Australian Army that operated during the Vietnamese War. There 1009 men in this team over a period of 10 years with 11 New Zealand volunteers. They were tasked to train and advise units of the then Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) as part of the existing US Advisory effort. My Father was a Warrant Office 1 Class with the New Zealand Army, a professional soldier and 40 years old when he went to Vietnam as part of this team. Tú was 28 with two young children and widowed when they met.

Dad said Tú was the kindest and sweetest person he had ever known.

Dad always typed his letters, however on this last one there was a handwritten note…”I am a small friend of Mr Brian. I mean Mr Brian’s age is one year younger than my father’s age. Mrs Tú Roe and I are very close friends so he has become my friend immediately since he came here to live with his wife. I am the one Mr Brian mentioned in his letter. I met him the last time just a few weeks before his death. The early morning of November 20th I stopped by his house to offer him a birthday present. He didn’t look well that day. He stayed home and had to cancel a day trip to the Delta with his group, among them Mr Rod.”

Anh had called around to see my father just weeks before he died. In his letter he mentions her bringing him a birthday gift – a picture of cranes inlaid in mother of pearl on polished black wood. This was not only a birthday gift but also as it was Teachers Day in Vietnam it was a gift to honour Dad helping Anh by teaching her English so she could get her then job at the Equatorial Hotel.

He talked a bit about his chest pains in his letter saying he was treating himself with an antibiotic and at the time of writing was in the 7 days ‘rest’ period before starting on the next 14 day course, if required.

He mentioned Rod, an Ex Vet NZ Military Policeman who was staying with him on his first trip back here since the war. The previous day he had met three New Zealand Volunteer Service abroad people including a nurse and her husband who was a hospital lab technician. They had spend 3 years in Cambodia and were now heading up to Quy Nhon, a coastal city in Bình Định Province in central Vietnam, for another 3 year stint to train their Vietnamese counterparts.

The nurse suggested dad might want to take some tablets for Round Worm which he did and started to feel better. As it turned out Tú had also thought the same thing and had bought him the treatment tablets as well.

Another visitor from New Zealand around this time was a Psychiatrist, Steve who had been given Dads contact by an Ex Vet in Christchurch. Steve was in Saigon as a brief stopover on his way to a conference in Hanoi and called in with a New Zealand desk calendar as a small gift for Tú. They walked into town up lanes that Steve said he would never have ventured down by himself. They had a few beers at a favourite expatriate bar.

They met a man from Coventry who used to be a policeman in Kenya in the Mau Mau days. As Dad says…” this is the place to meet all sorts…the good the bad and the ugly…”

Dad woke on his 66th birthday having had no medication for 48 hours and was feeling much better than he had for the past few months. On Saturday 23rd November Rod left for his further travels and Tam, the Number 8 sister of Tú who lived with them as a maid was going back to her parents place at the Mekong Delta on the following day so both Tú and Dad were looking forward to having the house to themselves. He also received a letter from his sister Pat who he had not heard from in over a year, along with a letter from a friend in Nelson NZ and a young Dutch boy who he met with his parents on a trip to Vietnam some time ago. They exchanged stamps in their letters. Dad was a prolific letter writer and had ‘pen pals’ around the world including one man who worked as a Beefeater at the Tower of London.

He goes on to write “It is still raining hard, every day seeming as if there no end to this wet season. The Star Fruit tree is covered in fruit, so much in fact that fruit is dropping off. Tú is upset however it is too small a tree to support the fruit it is producing. No orchids in flower yet but lots of root growth.”

Dad had a way of describing everyday events that gave me a view into his life. In this last letter he writes “So much that I see and do become ordinary in the course of time and so I forget to mention them. One of these is the Cyclo trips home from the Pam Ngu Lao Street in the evenings. It is dark; all sorts of lights in the old streets, from small kero lamps to electric lights, neon lights of a variety of colours and then areas of total blackness. Sometimes stars in the sky and a large moon. The streets are not crowded with people or traffic. It is a relaxing ride home reclining back though it would be more relaxing if the Cyclo rider would stop talking and asking questions. During the day I see these same cyclos over loaded with live ducks with the lowest ducks bending their necks up at an impossible angle to avoid them dragging on the road surface. They are on their way to the market to become somebody’s dinner. I see this all the time. I must remember to get a photo for you.”

“Yesterday, the 26th November, while sitting at the Saigon Café a peddler pulled up with his trolley – A wheel of Fortune – two of the expats go over and buy tickets, one of them won a plastic plate…then suddenly a plain clothes policeman hops of the back of a Honda and takes the Wheel of Fortune. The casino is Now Closed.”

“27th November – it’s raining and hot and sticky. I slept all night with the fan on and have woken with a head cold. Tu is at the market and I am resting. The iceman is calling out in the lane…no hope of going back to sleep. The postie arrived with a couple of letters from Australia plus a notice to say there is a parcel at customs for me to collect. I will have to go and pick it up. Maybe it is the one from you.”

This is 19 days before he dies. Did he get the parcel? I never know.

This last paragraph written to me from my father...

“I saw an interesting program on TV about a new treatment for Parkinson’s, but I think Neville is up to date with this info. He may even have this mentioned in his last letter.”

December 15th 1996. My father died alone… with tears tracking down his face, in a hospital bed in a distant country, nobody there to hold his hand or witness his passing. Tú was trying to find a public phone - to ring the friend Dad had sent her to ring – she came back to find him gone…no farewell words…no smile…just simply gone.

Formalities were dealt with in haste and he was taken from that hospital as if they were eager to have this foreign man gone. His body was taken down two floors to be lifted on to a wooden hand cart hired for this job and then walked down a dusty, noisy and oblivious street …

His dying was in stark contrast to the funeral rites that Tú paid to lament his passing. US$10,000 were paid in her grief for professional mourners, a Buddhist Monk, incense chanting - all worthy of a great man…or someone dearly loved. Dad would have stood by the side of the road, if he could have, and witnessed the funeral procession with keen interest, and he would have described it vividly in a letter to me…if he could have.

He was buried in a Buddhist Cemetery across town, across the road from a Catholic Cemetery. He would have been happy that he was buried there.

My first visit was in 2004. On the day I first arrived in Vietnam Tú and Anh met Patrick, my partner and I at the airport and took us to the backpacker’s area where we had booked accommodation. This was my first experience of a taxi ride through the streets of Saigon where everyone seemed hell bent on getting to where they were going with as much weaving in and out of and often into oncoming traffic and tooting as often as they could. I had travelled in Asian countries in my twenties but I had never experienced this level of chaos!

Tú was keen to take us to my father burial place and went off to gather all the things she needed for us to honour my father. It was hot, dry dusty and foreign. I was tired after flying all night with an overnight stop in Kuala Lumpur with no sleep. The last thing I needed was to be a passenger in another hair-raising ride. However that is exactly what we did.

Tú was unhappy with the weeds around Dad’s grave and berated - or at least that is what it sounded like - the cemetery attendant, whom I later paid to take special care of his grave as prompted by Tú.

Patrick and Tú got stuck in and cleared weeds and made it reasonably presentable. The tomb – for that is what it was - was larger than I thought it would be and there was a photo of Dad on the headstone.

I felt nothing. I expected to, however I didn’t. Except perhaps surprise and interest in the size of his tomb and the ceremony that followed. It was hot, dry, noisy and dusty.

Incense sticks were arranged and lit to purify the area around my father’s grave. We were later during the chanting prayer Tú led, to hold these incense sticks and bow towards Dad. Chrysanthemums were set in a vase - the Chrysanthemums were a surprise – such a New Zealand flower. Tú had made Dad’s favourite food and bought it from her home and this was set on top of the tomb, along with fresh fruit, a bottle of beer, paper glasses, paper shorts and shirt and ghost money. All of the paper offerings were burnt to ensure my father had all the good things he liked with him in the afterlife. Burning these items transfers them into the spirit world for the deceased.

The second time I visited Vietnam was in 2008. I was again with Patrick, however also with my son Simon and his then girlfriend later to be wife, Krystal, and my daughter and younger son, Lisa and Morgan. The airport had changed dramatically from that earlier visit. In 2004 it was small with prefabricated huts and filled with armed soldiers seemingly on alert. The people waiting sat in tiered seats out the front of the airport doors in a very orderly and patient manner. Tú and Anh had arrived three hours before our plane arrived, so had premium seats right in the very front row. It was a very hot, dry, dusty day that first time I met my father’s wife - his widow, Tú.

Both Patrick and I had talked about the airport as remembered from our first visit to my children however it was completely different on this second visit as tourism had reached Vietnam. This time, in 2008 there was a brand new building, air conditioning, and rather bored, inattentive officials. We proceeded without any issues through to the entrance. This time Tu was not there to meet us and no tiered seats. We caught a taxi to a mini hotel booked online just around the corner from where we had stayed four years before.

The following day we all went in a minivan to the cemetery. The ceremony was similar to four years previously with weeding and burnt offerings. I was not so tired this time and it felt good to be here with my children. Again money was asked for by cemetery attendant and again given by me. I was also informed that the city was taking over this land for future development and the cemetery had to be picked up and moved - dis-internment and re-internment to be paid for… if desired. I declined.

I remember going with Anh to her house on my first trip in 2004. She had bought this with help from an American man who was a friend. He lived in Saigon for a time I understand and when he went back to the States he helped Anh buy this house. It was a very new and clean two storied house across the road from a river. It was a long way out of the main centre of Saigon and I was totally disorientated. We were going to catch a bus but Anh was having trouble remembering which bus to take so we ended up hiring a motorcycle driver - 2 of us sitting pillion. At one point the driver asked us to get off and walk a block, and get back on. There was a policeman directing traffic up ahead.

Shortly after this 2004 trip I had a letter from Tú saying that Anh had lost her memory completely and had been taken home to her parent’s house at The Delta to be cared for - I was never to hear anything more about her.

There are so many stories to be told about my father’s time living in Vietnam – about how he found Tú in 1992 many years after the war ended and 20 years since they had last seen each other. How she spent time attending a re-education prison camp because of her wartime relationship with Dad, attending during the day but allowed to go home at night. Of how Tú gave birth to his daughter, my sister after he left Vietnam and who sadly died when she was only 2 1/2 years old. Of how he being a keen gardener created a footpath garden outside a house he bought and lived in with Tú in Saigon.

So many stories, however when I think of Dad now this piece he wrote in one of his many letters is what I remember first…

“It is now Saturday morning and I am sitting at a street café in Ho Chi Minh City having soup for breakfast and drinking artichoke tea. An old man is filling an iron with charcoal from the café cooker. Once he has enough he pays for it and goes off to iron his clothes. At the same time a new Mercedes car pulls up across the road and lets off a well dressed woman. A legless beggar bumbles his way up the footpath on two small boxes strapped to his hands trying to sell lottery tickets. Children squat by the road playing cards and a man sits on a small stool on the corner with a hand pump, a puncture repair kit and a can of 2 stroke petrol. He has a handwritten sign strapped to a brick with rubber bands advertising him as a service station. A fruit vendor also runs a lending library out of some baskets. She has covered the books in brown paper and has written the titles and book numbers on the paper in felt pen. Joss sticks burn, a breadfruit tree is growing out of the footpath and the road is lined with huge teak trees. Everyone is doing something in their own way, in their own time.”