Thank you life…
Vo Ngoc Thanh
The first year I arrived in America, Thanksgiving meant nothing to me at all. I'm just happy that that day was off work, and had an evening of eating and drinking with my family. It wasn't until three years later that I really understood the meaning of Thanksgiving.
This time I'm doing an internship at a Pharmacy to get a Pharmacy degree. This pharmacy is very crowded, everyone works without rest all day, the phone is always ringing continuously, so everyone is stressed, tired and almost no one has a smile on their lips.
The pharmacy had a regular customer named Josephine Smiley. I remember very clearly her very kind face. That year, she was nearly 80 years old, she was disabled in her arms and legs, so she was in a wheelchair, had rheumatism, so her fingers were constricted, and she was being treated for cancer in the final stage. Every time she came to get medicine (she drank more than a dozen dishes a month, for all kinds of diseases), I looked at her with pity.
Because I feel very sorry for her, I often try to smile with her, ask her a few questions, or help push her wheelchair. It is said that her husband and only child were killed in a car accident. Although she escaped death, she was disabled, and since then she has suffered from depression (depressed). Since 5 years, she has been diagnosed with cancer again and lives alone in a nursing home.
I still vividly remember the evening before Thanksgiving in 1993, when she came to pick up the medicine, she smiled at me and gave me a card and a loaf of cake. She told me to open the card and read it.
I opened the card and was moved to see the trembling, crooked handwriting:
“Dear Thanh,
My name is Josephine Smiley, but life does not “smile” to me at all. Many times I wanted to kill myself, until the day I met you in this pharmacy. You are the ONLY person who always smiles to me, after the death of my husband and my son. You made me feel happy and help me keep on living. I profit this Thanksgiving holiday to say “Thank you”, Thanh.
Thank you, very much, for your smile…”
Dear Thanh,
I'm Josephine Smiley. My life has not had a laugh and many times I have thought of death. Until one day I met you. You are the only one who has always smiled at me, since the death of my husband and son. You make me happy and want to move on with this life. I want to take this Thanksgiving to say thank you.
Thank you very much for your smile)
She hugged me and burst into tears. Me too. I completely did not expect that, with just one smile, I could give a person more energy to live. That was the first time, I felt the noble meaning of Thanksgiving Day.
On Thanksgiving next year, I was waiting for her to come get her medicine before closing the shop, when a young girl came looking for me. She gave me a card and informed me that Mrs. Josephine Smiley had just passed away 3 days ago. She said that when she was dying, she gave this nurse a card and asked her to deliver it to me on Thanksgiving day. I burst into tears. My tears have completely blurred the crooked, squiggly words on the page:
My dear Thanh,
I am thinking of you until the last minute of my life.
I miss you, and I miss your smile…
I love you, my “daughter”…
My beloved bar
I still think of you until the last minute of my life.
I miss you so much, I miss your smile.
I love you so much, my daughter)
I cried my eyes out all day and cried all day at her funeral, the "American Mother" who called me "my daughter"…
Everywhere on this earth, there are still many people in need of our kind hearts...
If we talk about the two words "THANK YOU" with those to whom we have been indebted, it will probably be a lot, because no one exists in the world who has not been indebted to others. We are born as humans, already a blessing from God. Like me, having this day, sitting and writing these lines, still have Father's grace, Mother's grace, Master's grace...
Thank you Mom for giving birth and raising me until adulthood. Thank you, Mother, for the hard days that made her back bend, her shoulders buckled. Thank you for the sorrows and worries that Mother has silently endured for nearly half a century…
Thank you, Dad, for raising and educating me. Thank you, Dad, for the hard years, the long days of running to take care of me every piece of rice and clothes. Thank you for the sweat dripping on the back of Ba's shirt, to earn every penny to raise children to study...
Thank you to the teachers who have taught me to be a human being and given me so much knowledge so that I can become a useful person for society...
Thank you for sharing with me the most difficult days, the first days of setting foot in a foreign country...
Thank you to all my friends who have given me so many happy and sad memories – priceless gifts that I could never buy. If it weren't for you, perhaps my whole white shirt would not have had anything to hold on to…
Thank you to my old friend who "nourished" me for many years at university, with cans of "gigo" of rice, vegetables, and eggs, with small cups of tea or cups of iced tea in the canteen every day. .
Thank you to my patients for the joy in my work. Even the most difficult patients, helped me understand what suffering is, the pain of illness...
Thank you to my bosses for letting me know the value of money, so that I understand that I should not waste it, because honest money always has to be exchanged for hard work...
Thank you to all the lovers, even those who have left, for helping me feel what is Love, Happiness, and also what is suffering and separation.
Thank you for the lines of poetry and music for helping me find joy in the most wandering moments, to forget a little sadness and anxiety, to see that this life still has something to remember, to love...
Thank you for the ups and downs of life for letting me taste all kinds of sweet and bitter flavors, to realize that this life is impermanent... from that, less of the arrogant "me" of the day...
Thank you to everyone… everyone who came into my life, and everyone I never knew. Because of:
"One hundred years ago, we did not meet,
Will we meet again in a hundred years?
A life of color no no no,
Well, let's live wholeheartedly together…”
The article is shared by Ms. Vo Ngoc Thanh, a pharmacist in her 30s, currently a resident of Westminster, Orange County.