I want to thank you all for being here. Thank you to Dan, Kama, and the choir for your wonderful music and talent during this Mass. Thank you to my mother’s caregivers that took care of her. Thank you to her friends for visiting her to keep her spirits up. And thank you to this amazing Catholic community, her church, where it was like a second home for her. If you ever needed to find my mom, if she wasn’t at home, it was a safe bet that she was at church praying or volunteering for something.
I don’t think it’s a secret that my mom and I didn’t always get along. We are both admittedly stubborn people. My father had often said that I inherited my stubbornness from my mother. He’s not wrong — but I also like to think it wasn’t stubbornness, but a tenacious spirit.
It was thanks to her tenacity that my sister and I were able to go to the best schools and were given so many opportunities even in the face of some seemingly insurmountable odds. It was thanks to her tenacity that we made our roots in Cupertino after traveling all over the globe. From Vietnam, to Chile, to Mexico, to LA, to Cupertino, it was my mother’s love and tenacity that created a home for us here in the Bay Area.
Every family has their stories. My family has several of them: the story of how we were evacuated from Vietnam. The story of how we are evacuated from Iran.
My favorite story is actually of a tradition my mother and I had. Every year after Christmas, my mother and I would wake up before the crack of dawn and head on over to Macy’s where we would wait by the doors for them to open for their sales event. This is how we would decide what to decorate our tree for the next year. It would all depend on how much was on sale and how many ornaments were available. I still remember her yelling “white and gold okay, Michael??” Okay mom — and I would dash off to find trinkets and ribbons to add to our horde. After a few hours we’d review what we had and start editing. Too big. Too loud. Too small. Wrong shade of color. But you never tossed a slightly broken one. “We can get a discount!”, she would say. My mother always did love a good deal. “See this purse? 50% off.” You could always count on our tree to always be the decked out to the nines just like my mother.
There’s another little known story that I’d like to share with you. I would always be embarrassed, but hindsight is a funny thing. I believe that it was one of her favorite memories because it spoke of our love for each other. I was very young and we were taking a walk. I couldn’t tell you where we were going, but I’d always stop to pick flowers for my mom — flowers from the yard, flowers from the neighbors yard, you get the idea. I had told her to “wait, okay? Wait okay?” then ran ahead and picked up a dandelion that I had seen and proudly presented it to her.
As I grew up, it was a phrase that became synonymous with love. “Wait okay? I have a surprise for you. Wait okay? I need to get your walker from the backseat. Wait okay? I’m just getting off of work.
I found myself praying as I flew down the highway to be by her side saying the same words over and over again. I prayed for her to just wait okay? I’m on my way. My mother may be gone, but I like to think that my father was there waiting to guide her home. My sister and I have seen so many signs lately that I truly believe we are being guided — that our parents are here in spirit to let us know that we’re loved, that everything is going to be okay.
Thank you again for being here to celebrate the life of my mother. It means the world to us.
Eulogy was delivered September 20, 2019 at St. Joseph of Cupertino Catholic Church.