In the midst of suffering, happiness still shines

(Baonghean.vn) - When we arrived home, he was washing his wife's hair. The husband was drying each strand of his wife's hair. They were laughing and talking to each other. None of us said anything because we wanted to forever admire that moment called happiness.

Love overcomes rapids

In the chilly wind of the first cold season, I followed the footsteps of the volunteer group of the Faith group to visit the family of Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong in Gia De hamlet, Nghia Dung commune, Tan Ky district. Located about 2 km from the legendary Ho Chi Minh road, the small house where the woman suffered countless pains due to illness, but is also a famous house because it witnessed the existence of a fairy tale in everyday life, about the power of love that has overcome countless barriers, challenges, and is still challenging death every day and every hour.

Born in 1979, in 1996, Ms. Phuong learned that she had a spinal cord tumor. Working as a worker in Song Than Industrial Park, Binh Duong Province to earn a living and pay for medical treatment, she met Truong Van Chin, a young soldier from Tien Giang, while in the hospital. They fell in love, but as her illness got worse, she returned to her hometown for treatment and wrote a letter asking to break up so that Mr. Chin could have a happy future.

Ms. Phuong said, I - a girl who was paralyzed by illness and had to lie still, after writing a farewell letter, I was devastated by the pain. After 4 months of writing that letter, one day I looked out at my small yard and saw the person I loved traveling thousands of kilometers to come to me in the middle of nowhere. Then the whole Gia De neighborhood was also in an uproar because a young man with a southern accent asked for directions to "find a friend's house", then stayed to take care of his friend. Who would have thought that Mr. Chin would overcome all the criticism and discrimination to be faithful to his first love in the midst of adversity in both space and circumstances.

The wedding of a white, agile, good-looking young man from the South with a paralyzed girl from the midlands of Nghe An. On the wedding day, the groom was assigned by the bride's family to let the bride sit in a wheelchair. It was truly a strange story, a fairy tale in real life.

Even more miraculously, after many surgeries, at one point Ms. Phuong weighed only under 30kg, yet she was still able to become a mother and successfully gave birth to the surprise of even the doctors. Now Truong Bao Phuc is 9 years old, in 4th grade, healthy and rides his bike to the village school like many of his peers.

Despite being paralyzed, Ms. Phuong still successfully gave birth without surgery. In the photo is the family when Truong Bao Phuc was less than 1 year old. Photo provided by Ms. Phuong.

Mr. Chin said that in 2016, Ms. Phuong suffered from severe pleural effusion. The Provincial General Hospital and the team of doctors from Cho Ray Hospital were “unable to do anything”, and the ambulance took her home with almost all hope gone. At that time, each of her breaths depended entirely on an oxygen tank.

After a few days at home, the fluid from her lungs through the drainage tube gradually decreased, her breathing became stronger, once again, from the "near-death" realm, in her happy home, her husband and children took her back from the hands of death.

During that illness, Mr. Chin had to take a year and a half off work to take care of his wife. Now he has returned to work for 6 months in Bac Vinh Industrial Park. Although bedridden, Ms. Phuong still asked her family to buy her a cabinet to sell groceries to people in the area. She also took on typing and printing services. Anyone in the village who needed them would bring them to her for work. "I am still happy because I am still useful, still saving every penny to help Mr. Chin raise Bao Phuc to study" - Ms. Phuong confided.

Poet - "Messenger of happiness"!

When guests come to visit, Ms. Phuong never stops telling stories to make everyone happy. On the small bed, she lies in the middle and around her are a lot of medicine, medical equipment... also around her are poetry books, photos of meetings. On her side is a catheter, but on her chest is a laptop containing many poems, stories she wrote herself. And with that same computer, the woman who has been immobile for decades has connected with the bustling life outside, but not with the gloomy inner self of a person constantly sick and in pain, but with the strong spirit of a woman who has defeated death many times.

It is known that from the special feelings that her husband has for her, Ms. Phuong always feels that she is a happy person and cannot express them all in words. Therefore, she writes stories to express her feelings. The autobiography she wrote was "sponsored" by the People's Police Newspaper Publishing House and is called "Love Fairy Tale". When the pain was persistent and she could not write long, she turned to writing poetry.

She lay there with a withered body, her feet shriveled and bleeding black, but her voice was still warm and full of inner strength. She compared herself to a “Crescent Moon”, but it was a “Crescent Moon” that was always optimistic because “Her smile was still blooming, her soft lips were still fresh”. She read to us the poem Crescent Moon, Debt to You… The verses were full of emotion: “A crescent moon in the middle of a sea of ​​people/Who laughs, who cries, who feels empty/The sadness cannot be counted or measured/As long as it is next to loving arms”...

Ms. Dinh Thi Thao - President of the Women's Union of Nghia Dung commune said that people in Nghia Dung also call Ms. Phuong a poet, because she has many poems about love, fate, and the concept of happiness, which are very close and touching. Not only Nghia Dung women but also women in many places hand-copy them to pass on to each other, especially on Vietnamese Women's Day October 20 and International Women's Day March 8. Ms. Phuong's example, along with her poems, has given strength to many women, contributing to lighting up and warming the fire of happiness in many other families.

During this time, Ms. Phuong used Facebook with the account name "Phuong Chin", and regularly, she introduced poems full of sound, light, and the excitement of a soul longing to be in harmony with life. Reading the sparkling, pure, and clear poems, few people knew that they were the poems of a woman whose body had been in the operating room no less than 5 times, and had returned from the brink of death many times:

"I sit and whet the pig's thread
Join together to form wings and fly in life
In tune with the rhythm of life
Soul drifts with the scene of playing and having fun

Cool autumn breeze
Quietly watching the flowers and leaves sway on the branches
Watch the clear blue lake
The sun shines golden

Nature in symphony
Butterflies, bees... dance and sing in harmony with the sun
Flocks of people flying around
"Flattering your wings is so cute"

(Nature in Concert, September 28, 2017)

Together with the Faith group, we gave her a small gift with wishes for health and happiness on the occasion of the founding day of the Vietnam Women's Union. We said goodbye to her when the afternoon sun had set, in the cold of late autumn in the mountainous region, strong winds whipped into the valley, and we felt strangely warm. Each of us brought back "special energies", special lessons about love and happiness, from a special woman: Endless suffering but not unhappiness, crushed by illness but shining with faith and aspiration.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong and Mr. Truong Van Chin are worthy messengers of love, beautiful symbols of the immortality of love!

Receiving a gift of 10 million VND from the representative of the Faith group, Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong affirmed that she will always live a worthy life to be an example of perseverance and love for life to be worthy of everyone's attention. She also sent her wishes for the Faith group to continue to carry out many charitable journeys to multiply faith in life as the group's motto: Sow faith - Nurture hope - Reap love. Photo: OPND.

The Faith Volunteer Group took a souvenir photo with the family of Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong - "messenger of love" in the "happy house" in Gia De hamlet, Nghia Dung commune, Tan Ky district. Photo: OPND

Duc Duong