A hundred years from now, nobody will care about the challenges we face every day, our moments of joy and despair, or even the greatest of our achievements. In time, everything powerful fades, everything painful eases.
Three years ago Phi Nhung lost her fight to stay alive and continue to share her talent and compassion with us. She lost her life after risking it to relieve the suffering of others. She didn’t expect to die, but she knew her charity work put her in grave danger. She walked towards her fate without thought for her own wellbeing.
Beyond the good works Nhung left behind, she leaves us with two important legacies: her music and her story. In a century, her voice, so cruelly taken away from her, will still resonate in people’s hearts. Her story will set an example and represent part of the history of Vietnam and of Vietnamese Americans. In fighting to preserve her story for future generations, we hope to bring permanence to what her life stood for.
We wrote “An Emissary from Heaven” in honour of Phi Nhung’s work and as a gift to her biological daughter Wendy, whose loss was greater than all of ours when we had to farewell our Woman of Courage. Many loved Tinh Binh, but no one more so than the child she bore into this world, for whom her departure was the most catastrophic.
We all love our parents, no matter how famous or successful they are. Vietnam is home to many great stories of ordinary people whose example as parents bring light to succeeding generations. Of course, many of those stories are lost, without anyone to write them down.
Taking inspiration from our work in telling the story of Wendy Pham’s mother, we are preparing one more gift to the Vietnamese people. Our forthcoming book is a step-by-step guide to show how anyone can write a memoir about their own parents. We believe every parent has a story to tell, although most of us never remember to listen and record the details before it’s too late. So many stories of the past are lost forever. This is not only a loss to a family, but to the shared history of the Vietnamese lived experience.
We aim to release our new book in Tet 2025. We humbly wish to continue to support the Vietnamese community in the best way we know how – through storytelling.
On this, the third anniversary of her passing, we remember Pham Phi Nhung, born 10 April 1970 in Pleiku, Gia Lai; passed 28 September 2021, aged 51, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.