What a man lives through

Something personal. I knew this kid in high school, T., who was a Vietnamese immigrant. He started his journey to America as a child. He crossed the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Cambodia. His parents were dead. I can’t remember if they had died before he left, or on the trip. Somehow, little T. made it to a refugee camp in Thailand, and then, in time, to the United States. He settled — or rather, was settled, because he was still a boy — in the New Orleans area. T. did well in school, and made it into one of the state’s top public high schools. I didn’t know him well. He was shy, and didn’t speak great English, but I recall him as being exceptionally kind and tender. I wondered back then how a kid survives all the things that he went through, and maintains his humanity. Just to look at T. was to see someone who would do anything in the world for you. An extraordinary young man.

News came yesterday that T.’s wife just died from an inoperable brain tumor. He is now left to raise their children alone. I don’t know why God allows things like this to happen, and I know it’s pointless to ponder it for too long. Please, if you pray, say a prayer for that good man T. and his children. He has seen things, and endured things, that none of us should have to see and to endure. You might have thought those soul-crushing days of trial and torment were over for him. You might have thought.