A Broken Man Who Taught Me How to Live

Grandpa standing proudly in the United States of America, a country he loved dearly. (1998)

I am writing this in 2025 so death is not the last word.
Looking back, I see the simple truth.
To honor Grandpa, I must LIVE FULLY.
Grieving teaches me to carry his LEGACY with integrity…
so today I choose life.

A sunny day in Oregon

People often tell me I resemble my grandfather.
As a teen, I hated this because I wanted to be me. I wanted to be one of a kind.
But in hindsight, I am glad I resemble this man.
Because he was one of the few beacons of light in my world when it was pitch dark.

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One of my fondest memories of my Grandpa was the day I turned twenty one.

It was one of those rare sun-filled days in the rainy state of Oregon, in the city known for wearing its hipster culture proudly alongside its “Keep Portland Weird” theme, and those dreaded cloudy skies people say are responsible for keeping Portlanders depressed.

On that memorable day, however, I drove to the closest mini mart.
I walked in like the fully grown adult I had just become, pulled out my wallet, and purchased a case of Heineken.

This was my Grandpa’s favorite beer, and I had been waiting all my life to be able to buy him a case legally.

I could already savor the taste of that lager in my mouth
I knew this purchase would make him happy and proud.

I showed the clerk my I.D., since he was overly suspicious of my baby face, and with the package secured, I vaulted into my Honda Civic and went straight to my Grandpa’s.

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My Grandpa greeted me with a smile. I smiled back.
And for a moment, the world was simple.
I opened the first beer that I had bought him, handed it to him, and opened mine.
He looked at me joyfully, as if he had grown proud of the young man I had matured into.

And I was proud, in my own way, that such an important and imposing figure in my life was sharing this milestone with me.
Little did I know that the proud smile on his face that day would be etched into my memory for the rest of my life.
He has passed now, and even though he lived a long life…
the silence after him still startles me.

I was so used to him being there that my body and mind…on some days…
still believe he is around.

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Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. -Seneca

The boy who became my Grandpa

Who was my grandpa? And how did he end up where he ended up?

A boy with a painful beginning. He was an orphan at an early age. His mother was killed by a misplaced artillery shell in the war-ravaged country of Vietnam, so his aunt took him in and raised him. Living right across the border from Vietnam and China, he grew up walking back and forth between the two countries when borders weren’t really borders. Without much education, he somehow learned to speak four languages.

He was resilient. He survived. He adapted.
And he always kept going.

He fought in the First Indochina War as a paratrooper for the French, and later joined the South Vietnamese Army as he made his way into South Vietnam while the country was dividing politically.

During this migration south, he met my Grandmother.
He enlisted in the South Vietnamese Army not only because he was an experienced veteran, but because he BELIEVED deeply in democracy.

Although he saw holes in the South Vietnamese government from the beginning, he also saw hope for his people. He believed in democracy so deeply that he fought on the opposite side of his only sibling: his older brother, who fought for the North Vietnamese Army.

My Grandpa’s job was to jump from planes, move behind enemy lines, and call in artillery. And for a quarter of his life he only knew war. But he never let war define his life.

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Grandpa around in his early 30’s.

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My Grandpa was not very religious. But he had a way of living life.

There were times when I felt he could have been a philosopher if he had lived in a different era.

The man spoke four languages.

One thing he told me stays close to my heart to this day.

“If people would just stop looking at each other differently and embrace the differences, because that is what makes us humans unique, then we would have fewer wars, less bloodshed, and fewer innocent people dying.” -Grandpa

Looking back now, I am one hundred percent sure he was thinking of the mother he never knew when he said this to me. Outside of war, he was a very good farmer and always kept the backyard neat and full of vegetables. He also loved biking, and he would ride every single day up and down the streets of Portland.

His dream was to own a bike shop after the war.

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Grandpa in uniform in mid 1960’s. (South Vietnamese Army)

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Even though he lost friends in horrific battles and was shot himself, he never let any of this change how he lived.

He remained humble, modest, and a teacher of important lessons to me.
He became my main male role model because I grew up without a father and, in a sense, without a mother too, bouncing from place to place without a real home.

He passed on to me the ability to live with compassion, to be grateful for what I have, and to never chase what was not meant for me. Through him, I learned to take life one day at a time. Whenever I wasn’t having a good day, which felt like almost every day at that age, he would tell me:
“Live every single day of your life as if you had one hour left to live.”

And this will follow me throughout my life.

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What the war left behind

Looking back through memory lane, there were subtle signs I did not understand..

Why were the locks always checked? Why was the door double bolted?
Why was there a chair wedged against every single entrance or exit?

It felt like he was imprisoning himself.
He had survived an ambush, shot through his lower jaw, unable to move.
Somehow, someway, locals found him and decided to help him.

And he was saved when reinforcements arrived.
After that, he was discharged from service so he could recuperate.

Years later, after going through college and majoring in history, I would do a lot of reading about the Vietnam War, trying to understand the conflict that eventually led to me coming here.

Sometimes, I wondered:
Did being discharged save his life?

I dug into this issue later in my college years, and read that as the victorious Communists consolidated their government power after the war.
They purged those who supported the South Vietnamese government, especially those who served in the army.

But somehow…my Grandpa survived.
But the war never left him.

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When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. Viktor Frankl

In his twilight years, I watched the pauses between his words.
Sometimes he would stop and look through me,
as if the past had pulled him back into a deep void.

He would sit motionless. Reliving whatever hell he had gone through.
During his twenty or so years in service. It was was hard to watch.

For both him and me. I would later read about this.
And I would learn to call it PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

And it answered some of my questions.

He drank every single day. I used to think it was just a bad habit.

Later, I would face my own battle with alcoholism.
And it would make me realize the size of the pain he was trying to quiet.

Now, thinking back in hindsight, I feel like I can feel part of his pain.
I am reminded of his own words, the ones he would preach to me:
“Sometimes the strongest people are the ones who fight in silence.”

And now I get it. Healing does not always look heroic.
Sometimes it is just surviving another day.

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My uncle told me that in the early days…
when his army won battles my Grandpa never looted.
While most in his platoon did.

As I grew up, I came to understand that integrity was not a slogan for him.
It was a quiet way of moving through the world. Almost like a meditation.
A way of living. An honorable code. But there are always two sides to every story, and his was no exception.

On the day his platoon was destroyed, only his life was spared.

I do not claim easy answers.
But it felt like the universe protected a soul that refused to be cruel.
Yet it also stole his enjoyment of the simple things in life.

Slowly and steadily. Day by day Minute by minute.
It was a horrible trade for my Grandpa.
But without it, I would not be alive today.

Beauty always rises from the murk.

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The flight to Dallas

When Grandma passed a few years ago, I was shattered.

She was my mother. She took care of me when no one wanted me.
It completely annihilated me because I knew she was gone.

I knew I would never see her caring face again.
I knew I would never hear her stories about the silk cocoons from her childhood.
I knew I would never be able to tell her I loved her again.
I knew I would never eat that traditional rice and pork dish she always seemed to have waiting for me.

This was all gone. And I had to accept it.

For four long years, I stayed beside her and fought daily battles against Alzheimer’s.

We won tiny battles, but I knew we were losing the war.
It slowly swallowed whatever was left of her.

She raised me. And when she left, something in me broke.

But then my firstborn son arrived like light at the exact right time.
It felt like life had given me something to hold onto before I disappeared completely.

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The last time I spent time with my Grandpa was at his wife’s funeral.
Dallas, Texas. November 10th, 2021.

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This time, I felt something different.
To be honest, I did not feel much at first.
I was on a flight to Dallas, Texas, for a funeral I did not want to attend.

But I knew I had to be there. It did not feel real.
Grandpa had moved thousands of miles away from where he wanted to be.

He loved Oregon. Its seasonal weather. It’s beautiful pine trees. Its people.

He once told me that after spending so much time in the jungles of Vietnam…
he had grown to hate the heat.

But now I understand something.
I don’t think it was only the heat he hated.
I think it was what the heat brought back.
The nights he could not escape.
The memories. The demons. The sounds. The pain.

Grandpa had been to the hospital plenty of times in his life.
But this time felt different. The doctor said he would not survive.
His heart was only working at twenty-five percent.

I was ready then.
I flew out and made it in time. I stayed.

For two weeks, I prepared myself mentally and physically for goodbye.
But miraculously he recovered.

Even the doctors called it a miracle.
My aunt told me he called out my name the nights before I arrived.

She said he wanted to make sure I was there. And eventually I was.

But this time… I had my own family to raise.

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Grandpa during my younger cousin’s high school graduation.
June 2023.

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I DID NOT MAKE IT.
I was NOT THERE.
I was… NOT THERE.When the man I respected most in my life took his last breath.

I had a visit planned. A summer trip to Texas.
I was going to take my firstborn son and let him meet his great-grandfather.
But my second child was still an infant. He had just arrived.
So I waited. But…I did get to talk to Grandpa.
I was able to FaceTime him… so he could see my first child.

The doctor even told me he might go home the next day.
And..everything seemed okay. So I let myself sleep that night.

Then, all of a sudden, he was gone.
By 5 a.m. my time, thousands of miles away, he had disappeared from my life.

At that moment, my mind screamed the same sentence over and over:
The moment I found out he was in the hospital, I should have booked that goddamn ticket.

That is a hard lesson grief teaches you.
Life does not wait for anyone.

Not for you. Not for me. Not for our children.
Every person carries an invisible hourglass.

Some grains fall fast.
Some fall slow.
But they all fall.

So… if currently if you need to see someone. go see them.
If there is still a chance. take it.

Because some things just cannot be undone. And death is one of them.
So the next day, I did what I should have done the morning before.

I took the next flight. And on that flight, I suffered quietly.

I told myself: I will not miss this funeral.
I will be present.
I will carry these next few days with discipline, love, and respect.

For a legendary man…who shaped me.

Taught me. Raised me.
Loved me. Believed in me. And…Protected me.

A man who held my hand when the dark scared me.
A man who showed me that light still existed.
But…you just had to look for it.

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Grandpa & Me at my one of uncle’s wedding. (Portland, Oregon mid 1990’s)

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A man I will think of for the rest of my life.
After every new milestone.
A man people always said I resembled.
And today, I am damn proud of it.
I carry this pain because it is the cost of love.
The same way he carried his own pain from the war that ravaged his life.

So I have to honor him. By living my life well.
The way he would have wanted me to.
And if I can stay steady in moments like this…
Maybe I can stay steady for my dreams too.

I have lost so much in such a short time.
And their absence still aches.
But the ache has changed.
It no longer owns me the way it once did.

Now it reminds me to live.
To love people while they are here.
To remember that even heroes are human.
And to understand that healing does not happen all at once.
Sometimes all you can do is hurt.
And heal at the speed of the heart.

I am grateful to have had a role model who showed me what resilience looks like.
For the laughter after long days.
For the Budweiser I can still taste, even though I do not drink anymore.
For a man who crawled back from hell so I could exist.
Because of him…I can live with courage.

Legacy is the stories we keep.
The lessons we pass down.
The love we make visible.

Grandpa…I will pass your lessons to my children.
Not only your strength. But the softness of your heart.
The right kind of pride. The kind that refuses to harm.
And… keeps its word. The kind that leaves a gentle mark.

Rest in peace, Grandpa.

You were a warrior of your time. You jumped from planes.
You led men. You were shot. And you survived.
You chose life. You came home and built a family with a wife who held you steady.
You raised children.
And helped raise the children of those children.
And you did all of this while the ghosts of your past haunted you every single day.

Maybe that is why my middle child carries the name Valor.
Because when I think of that word…I think of you.

Just know…your love did not stop with one generation.
It reached me. And now I will carry it to mine.

The YouTube video I made about my Grandpa is below, for anyone who wants to watch.

Thank you for reading.
-Destin

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Originally published on Ghost in 2025, adapted for Substack.
I keep it here so the legacy and the love stay together.